All durable love begins by dreamy meditation.
It was suitable that these two beings should first see each other in the softer light of the moon, that love and its splendors might not dazzle them too suddenly; it was well that they met by the shores of the Ocean,--vast image of the vastness of their feelings.

They parted filled with one another, fearing, each, to have failed to please.
From his window Etienne watched the lights of the house where Gabrielle was.

During that hour of hope mingled with fear, the young poet found fresh meanings in Petrarch's sonnets.

He had now seen Laura, a delicate, delightful figure, pure and glowing like a sunray, intelligent as an angel, feeble as a woman.

His twenty years of study found their meaning, he understood the mystic marriage of all beauties; he perceived how much of womanhood there was in the poems he adored; in short, he had so long loved unconsciously that his whole past now blended with the emotions of this glorious night.