which precedes reason and asks no leave of the understanding, is not a
gradual and cautious attraction, like the growth of a coral reef, but
sudden and magnetic as the coalescence of two drops of mercury.

"During several following weeks we met many times, and yet, in looking
back to that dream of heaven, I cannot tell how often, nor for how
long. Time is merely the measure given to past emotions, and those
emotions flowed over me in a tidal sweep which merged all details in
one continuous memory. The lone hemisphere of my life was rounded into
completeness, and its feverish unrest changed to deep tranquillity, as
if a faint, tremulous star were transmuted into a calm, full-orbed
planet. Do you remember that story of Plato's--I recall the air-woven
subtilties of the delightful idealist, to illustrate, not to
prove--that story of the banquet where the ripe wines of the Aegean
Isles unchained the tongues of such talkers as Pausanias and Socrates
and others as witty and wise, until they fell into a discourse on the
origin of Love, and, whirling away on the sparkling eddies of fancy,
were borne to that preexistent sphere which, in Plato's opinion,
furnished the key to all the enigmas of this? There they beheld the
complete and original souls, the compound of male and female, dual and
yet one, so happy and so haughty in their perfection of beauty and of
power that Jupiter could not tolerate his godlike rivals, and therefore
cut them asunder, sending the dissevered halves tumbling down to earth,
bewildered and melancholy enough, until some good fortune might restore
to each the _alter ego_ which constituted the divine unity. 'And
thus,' says Plato, 'whenever it happens that a man meets with his other
half, the very counterpart of himself, they are both smitten with
strong love; they recognize their ancient union; they are powerfully
attracted by the consciousness that they belong to each other; and they
are unwilling to be again parted, even for a short time. And if Vulcan