Alice, or the Mysteries — Book 08

								

suffered, I betrayed it not.  Suddenly Evelyn appeared again before
me!--and suddenly I learned that she was free!  Oh, the rapture of that
moment!  Could you have seen her bright face, her enchanting smile, when
we met again!  Her ingenuous innocence did not conceal her gladness at
seeing me!  What hopes broke upon me!  Despite the difference of our
years, I think she loves me! that in that love I am about at last to
learn what blessings there are in life.
Evelyn has the simplicity, the tenderness, of Alice, with the refinement
and culture of Florence herself; not the genius, not the daring spirit,
not the almost fearful brilliancy of that ill-fated being,--but with a
taste as true to the Beautiful, with a soul as sensitive to the Sublime!
In Evelyn's presence I feel a sense of peace, of security, of home!
Happy! thrice happy! he who will take her to his breast!  Of late she has
assumed a new charm in my eyes,--a certain pensiveness and abstraction
have succeeded to her wonted gayety.  Ah, Love is pensive,--is it not,
Cleveland?  How often I ask myself that question!  And yet, amidst all my
hopes, there are hours when I tremble and despond!  How can that innocent
and joyous spirit sympathize with all that mine has endured and known?
How, even though her imagination be dazzled by some prestige around my
name, how can I believe that I have awakened her heart to that deep and
real love of which it is capable, and which youth excites in youth?  When
we meet at her home, or amidst the quiet yet brilliant society which is
gathered round Madame de Ventadour or the Montaignes, with whom she is an
especial favourite; when we converse; when I sit by her, and her soft
eyes meet mine,--I feel not the disparity of years; my heart speaks to
her, and that is youthful still!  But in the more gay and crowded
haunts to which her presence allures me, when I see that fairy form
surrounded by those who have not outlived the pleasures that so naturally
dazzle and captivate her, then, indeed, I feel that my tastes, my habits,
my pursuits, belong to another season of life, and ask myself anxiously
if my nature and my years are those that can make her happy?  Then,
indeed, I recognize the wide interval that time and trial place between
one whom the world has wearied, and one for whom the world is new.  If
she should discover hereafter that youth should love only youth, my
bitterest anguish would be that of remorse!  I know how deeply I love by
knowing how immeasurably dearer her happiness is than my own!  I will
wait, then, yet a while, I will examine, I will watch well that I do not
deceive myself.  As yet I think that I have no rivals whom I need fear:
surrounded as she is by the youngest and the gayest, she still turns with
evident pleasure to me, whom she calls her friend.  She will forego the
amusements she most loves for society in which we can converse more at
ease.  You remember, for instance, young Legard?  He is here; and, before