"Twenty years passed slowly away. It is common to speak of the _flight_ of time. For me, time has no wings. The days and years are faltering and tardy-footed, laden with the experiences of the outer and the problems of the inner world, which seem perpetually multiplied by reflection, like figures in a room mirrored on all sides. Meanwhile, my wife had died. I have never since sought women beyond the formal pale of the drawing-room: not from insensibility to loveliness, but because the memory, 'dearer far than bliss,' of one irretrievable affection shut out all inferior approach,--like a solitary planet, admitting no dance of satellites within its orbit.
"At last the long silence was broken. I heard that Blanche was free, and, with mingled haste and hesitation, I prepared to seek her. The ideal should be tested, I said to myself, by the actual, and if proved a deceit, then was all faith a mockery, all promise and premonition a glittering lie. As soon as winds and waves could carry me, I was in Louisiana, and in the very dwelling and at the same hour which had witnessed our parting. Again was it a soft summer evening. The same faint golden rays painted the sun's farewell, and the same silver moon looked eloquent response, as on the evening breeze floated sweet remembered odors of jessamine and orange. Again the ideal beauty of the lovely portrait met my gaze and seemed to melt into my heart; and once more, softly, lightly, fell a footstep, and the Presence by which I had never been forsaken, which I could never forsake, stood before me in 'palpable array of sense.' It was indeed the living Blanche, calm and stately as of old,--no longer radiant with the flush of youth, but serene in tenderest grace and sweet reserve, and beautiful through the lustre of the inner light of soul. She uttered a faint cry of joy, and placing her trembling hand in mine, we stood transfixed and silent, with riveted gaze, reading in each other's eyes feelings too sacred for speech, too deep for smiles or tears. In that long, burning look, it seemed as if the emotions of each were imparted to the other, not in slow succession as through words and sentences, but daguerreotyped or electrotyped in perfected form upon the conscious understanding. No language could have made so clear and comprehensible the revelation of that all-centring, unconquerable love which thrilled our inmost being, and pervaded the atmosphere around us with subtile and tremulous vibrations. In that moment all time was fused and forgotten. There was for us no Past, no Future; there was only the long-waited, all-embracing Now. I could willingly have died then and there, for I knew that all life could bring but one such moment. My heart spoke truly. A change passed over the countenance of Blanche,--an expression of unutterable grief, like Eve's retrospective look at Eden. Quivering with strange tremor, again she stood before me, with clasped hands and tearful eyes, in the very attitude of that memorable apparition, and again fell upon my ears the mysterious plaint and the uncompleted question,--_'You have been the cause of all this; oh, why did you not'_--