Page:Language of the Eye.djvu/73

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OF THE EYE.
55

activity than force of thought, and her nervous powers are more frequently disordered than man's.

Woman would trust for endless years; to man she tells her heart, and lays before his oft regardless mind jewels of countless value, the secrets of her soul, its parian innocence, its glistening life-like love, and all its hopes and fears, its joys and woes. To her the presence of the man she trusts is the presence of an angel, from whom she withholds none of the wild delights and ponderings which occupy her reveries. She even regards man as the minister between her and the supernal kingdom. There have been times, when overtaken by some temptation, and dizzy in the midst of abandonment, conscience presents to her some one of the apparitions of eternal beauty; she hastens to confess her sin and suffering; she goes to the anointed of the Church, and undraws that curtain, which screens from the common eye all the infinite genii, who are her tempters; her eyes, suffused in woe, are hidden by the beautiful lids, and she believes he will be her saviour from the magic spells. Often she describes to him the indwelling agony which has taken possession of her soul, in its contests with the spirit of holy love. She recites the woes her waywardness has created, and in maddening horror, in direst penitence, she asks the way to Heaven.