If the great event of a woman's
existence had been consummated, the world knew nothing of it, although the world
seemed to know Zenobia well. It was a ridiculous piece of romance, undoubtedly,
to imagine that this beautiful personage, wealthy as she was, and holding a
position that might fairly enough be called distinguished, could have given
herself away so privately, but that some whisper and suspicion, and, by degrees,
a full understanding of the fact, would eventually be blown abroad. But, then,
as I failed not to consider, her original home was at a distance of many hundred
miles. Rumors might fill the social atmosphere, or might once have filled it,
there, which would travel but slowly, against the wind, towards our
north-eastern metropolis, and perhaps melt into thin air before reaching it.
    There was not, and I distinctly repeat it, the slightest foundation in my
knowledge for any surmise of the kind. But there is a species of intuition -
either a spiritual lie, or the subtle recognition of a fact - which comes to us
in a reduced state of the corporeal system. The soul gets the better of the
body, after wasting illness, or when a vegetable diet may have mingled too much
ether in the blood. Vapors then rise up to the brain, and take shapes that often
image falsehood, but sometimes truth. The spheres of our companions have, at
such periods, a vastly greater influence upon our own, than when robust health
gives us a repellent and self-defensive energy. Zenobia's sphere, I imagine,
impressed itself powerfully on mine, and transformed me, during this period of
my weakness, into something like a mesmerical clairvoyant.
    Then, also, as anybody could observe, the freedom of her deportment (though,
to some tastes, it might commend itself as the utmost perfection of manner, in a
youthful widow, or a blooming matron) was not exactly maidenlike. What girl had
ever laughed as Zenobia did! What girl had ever spoken in her mellow tones! Her
unconstrained and inevitable manifestation, I said often to myself, was that of
a woman to whom wedlock had thrown wide the gates of mystery. Yet, sometimes, I
strove to be ashamed of these conjectures. I acknowledged it as a masculine
grossness - a sin of wicked interpretation, of which man is often guilty towards
the other sex - thus to mistake the sweet, liberal, but womanly frankness of a
noble and generous disposition. Still, it was of no avail to reason with myself,
nor to upbraid myself.