For the true mission of the divine passion
in its divinest form, is that it should elevate and inspire the
soul, bringing it to the noblest issues, and for this it must be
associated with respect, as well as passion. No true soul can love
what it does not sincerely feel to be worthy of love. And Sylvie--
the brilliant little caressable Sylvie, whose warm heart had been so
long unsatisfied, was, if not yet crowned by the full benediction of
love, still gratefully aware of the wonderful colour and interest
which had suddenly come into her life with the friendship of Aubrey
Leigh. His conversation, so different to the "small talk" of the
ordinary man, not only charmed her mind, but strengthened and
tempered it,--his thoughtful and tender personal courtesy filled her
with that serenity which is always the result of perfect manner,--
his high and pure ideas of life moved her to admiration and homage,-
-and when she managed to possess herself of every book he had
written, and had read page after page, sentence after sentence, of
the glowing, fervent, passionate language, in which he denounced
shams and glorified truth,--the firmness and fearlessness with which
he condemned religious hypocrisy, and lifted pure Christianity to
the topmost pinnacle of any faith ever known or accepted in the
world, her feelings for him, while gaining fresh warmth, grew deeper
and more serious, merging into reverence as well as submission.
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