There was no service so menial that she would not have been glad to perform it for her, and which she did not grudge the servants the privilege of rendering.

The happiness which flooded her heart at this time was beyond description.

It was not such a happiness as enabled her to imagine what that of heaven might be, but it was the happiness of heaven itself.
As might be expected, the semi-sacredness attaching to Ida, as a being something more than earthly in the circumstances of her advent, lent a rare strain to Paul's passion.
There is nothing sweeter to a lover than to feel that his mistress is of a higher nature and a finer quality than himself.

With many lovers, no doubt, this feeling is but the delusion of a fond fancy, having no basis in any real superiority on the part of the loved one.

But the mystery surrounding Ida would have tinged the devotion of the most prosaic lover with an unusual sentiment of awe.
Paul compared himself with those fortunate youths of antiquity who were beloved by the goddesses of Olympus, and in whose hearts religious adoration and the passion of love blended in one emotion.
Ever since that night when her heart had been melted by the story of his love, Ida had treated him with the graciousness which a maiden accords to an accepted lover.