We never
even spoke of the future; for all time, past and to come, seemed to
converge and centre and repose in that radiant present. In the
enchantment of my new life, I feared lest a breath should disturb the
spell, and send me back to darkness and solitude.
"Of course, this could not last forever. There came a time when I found
that my affairs would compel me to leave New Orleans for a year, or
perhaps a little longer. With the discovery my dream was broken. The
golden web which had been woven around me shrank beneath the iron hand
of necessity, and fell in fragments at my feet. I knew that it was
useless to speak to Blanch of marriage, for her father, a stern and
exacting man in his domestic relations, had often declared that he
would never give his daughter to a husband who had no fortune. If I
sought his permission to address her now, my fate was fixed. There was
no alternative, therefore, but to wait until my return, when I hoped to
have secured, in sufficient measure, the material passport to his
favor. Our parting was necessarily sudden, and, strange as it may seem,
some fatal repression sealed my lips, and withheld me from uttering the
few words which would have made the future wholly ours, and sculptured
my dream of love in monumental permanance.
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