To wait upon her was her greatest happiness. 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.
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