And now she knew that she loved, for the place of her fondness for
the one man had been taken by her passion for the other, and she felt
without reasoning, where, before, she had tried to reason herself into
feeling. The moment had come. She had seen the man in whom her happiness
was to be, the time was short, the danger great if she should not grasp
what her destiny would offer her but once. Had the Wanderer been by her
side, she would have needed to ask no question, she would have known and
been satisfied. But hours must pass before she could see him again, and
every minute spent without him grew more full of anxiety and disturbing
passion than the last. The wild love-blossom that springs into existence
in a single moment has elements which do not enter into the gentler
being of that other love which is sown in indifference, and which grows
up in slowly increasing interest, tended and refreshed in the pleasant
intercourse of close acquaintance, to bud and bloom at last as
a mild-scented garden flower. Love at first sight is impatient,
passionate, ruthless, cruel, as the year would be, if from the calendar
of the season the months of slow transition were struck out; if the
raging heat of August followed in one day upon the wild tempests of the
winter; if the fruit of the vine but yesterday in leaf grew rich and
black to-day, to be churned to foam to-morrow under the feet of the
laughing wine treaders.
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