With her sleepless
curiosity, her magnanimity, and her diamond-ring, like Annie of
Lochroyan's, to exchange for gold or for pewter, she might be pardoned
for her impatient questionings. To me, she was uniformly generous; but
neither did I escape. Our moods were very different; and I remember,
that, at the very time when I, slow and cold, had come fully to
admire her genius, and was congratulating myself on the solid good
understanding that subsisted between us, I was surprised with hearing
it taxed by her with superficiality and halfness. She stigmatized our
friendship as commercial. It seemed, her magnanimity was not met, but
I prized her only for the thoughts and pictures she brought me;--so
many thoughts, so many facts yesterday,--so many to-day;--when there
was an end of things to tell, the game was up: that, I did not
know, as a friend should know, to prize a silence as much as a
discourse,--and hence a forlorn feeling was inevitable; a poor
counting of thoughts, and a taking the census of virtues, was the
unjust reception so much love found. On one occasion, her grief broke
into words like these: 'The religious nature remained unknown to you,
because it could not proclaim itself, but claimed to be divined.
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