Doubtless my eyes betrayed this distinctly enough, though I forced my lips to silence; for what love had she, before whom life was opening like a path through a blooming garden, to bestow on the invalid cousin who was probably destined to an early death, and certainly to many a year of illness?
At our first meeting I felt that I loved her, but for that very reason I desired to conceal it.
I had grown modest.

It was enough for me to gaze at her, hear her dear voice, and sometimes--she was my cousin--clasp her little hand.
Science was now the object of my devotion.

My intellect, passion, and fire were all hers.

A kind fortune seemed to send me Nenny in order to bestow a gift also upon the heart, the soul, the sense of beauty.
This state of affairs could not last; for no duty commanded her to share the conflict raging within me, and a day came when I learned from her own lips that she loved me, that her heart had been mine when she was a little school-girl, that during my illness she had never wearied of praying for me, and had wept all night long when the physician told her mother of the danger in which I stood.
This confession sounded like angel voices.

It made me infinitely happy, yet I had strength to entreat Nenny to treasure this blissful hour with me as the fairest jewel of our lives, and then help me to fulfil the duty of parting from her.
But she took a different view of the future.