Of all the different means by which God has allowed soul to communicate
with soul, through the transparent barrier of the senses, there was not
one that our love did not employ to manifest itself,--from the look
which conveys most of ourselves, in an almost ethereal ray, to the
closed lids, which seem to enfold within us the image we have received,
that it may not evaporate; from languor to delirium, from the sigh to
the loud cry; from the long silence to those exhaustless words which
flow from the lips without pause and without end, which stop the
breath, weary the tongue, which we pronounce without hearing them, and
which have no other meaning than an impotent effort to say, again and
again, what can never be said enough....
Many a time did we talk thus for hours, in whispered tones, leaning on
the little table close to each other, without perceiving that our
conversation had lasted more than the space of a single aspiration;
quite surprised to find that the minutes had flown as swiftly as our
words, and that the clock struck the inexorable hour of parting.
Sometimes there would be interrogations and answers as to our most
fugitive shades of thought and nature, dialogues in almost unheard
whispers, articulate sighs rather than audible words, blushing
confessions of our most secret inward repinings, joyful exclamations of
surprise at discovering in us both the same impressions reflected from
one another, as light in reverberations, the blow in the counterblow,
the form in the image. We would exclaim, rising by a simultaneous
impulse, "We are not two; we are one single being under two illusive
natures! Which will say you unto the other; which will say I? There is
no _I_; there is no _you_; but only _we_." ... We would then sink down,
overcome with admiration at this wonderful conformity, weeping with
delight at this twofold existence, and at having doubled our lives by
consecrating them to each other.