To say that these wedded lovers were very happy, would scarcely express
the delirium of pure joy in which they had dreamed away their days and
nights for the last few weeks--joy that both were too young and untried
to know could not last for ever, could not indeed even last long--joy so
elevated in its insanity as almost to tempt some thunderbolt of
malignant fate to fall upon it with destroying force, even as the highly
rarefied air sometimes draws on the whirlwind and the storm.
But then the story of their loves was rare and strange, and almost
justified the intensity of their mutual devotion, and that story is
briefly this: