And instantly, before she sees him at all, she first feels delight.

Already it seems to her that she can smell the perfume of the flowers of heaven; it then seems to her that about her head, as about the head of an angel, a circle of glory is shaping itself, and the real heaven, the Heaven of Love, is at hand.
How very beautiful this is.

There is still one line which requires a separate explanation--I mean the sentence about the sands of time running golden.

Perhaps you may remember the same simile in Tennyson's "Locksley Hall": Love took up the glass of Time, and turn'd it in His glowing hands; Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.
Here time is identified with the sand of the hour glass, and the verb "to run" is used because this verb commonly expresses the trickling of the sand from the upper part of the glass into the lower.

In other words, fine sand "runs" just like water.