"I saw her, and could not forget her; I sought her society, and was
gratified with it. It is true, I sometimes (in the first stages of my
attachment) had my misgivings in relation to her character. I sometimes
feared that her ideas were too much limited to the perishing beauty of
her person. But to look upon her graceful figure yielding to the dance,
or reclining in its indolent symmetry; to watch the beautiful play of
coloring upon her cheek, and the moonlight transit of her smile; to
study her faultless features in their delicate and even thoughtful
repose, or when lighted up into conversational vivacity, was to forget
everything, save the exceeding and bewildering fascination before me.
Like the silver veil of Khorassan it shut out from my view the mental
deformity beneath it. I could not reason with myself about her; I had
no power of ratiocination which could overcome the blinding dazzle of
her beauty. The master-passion, which had wrestled down all others,
gave to every sentiment of the mind something of its own peculiar
character.
"I will not trouble you with a connected history of my first love, my
boyish love, you may perhaps call it. Suffice it to say, that on the
revelation of that love, it was answered by its object warmly and
sympathizingly. I had hardly dared to hope for her favor; for I had
magnified her into something far beyond mortal desert; and to hear from
her own lips an avowal of affection seemed more like the condescension
of a pitying angel than the sympathy of a creature of passion and
frailty like myself.
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