A Candle in the Wind by Mary Imlay Taylor

IT was late that evening before Faunce left the house. As the door finally closed behind him, a biting wind drove the first flakes of a snow-storm into his face. The touch of it, the sting of ice on his flushed cheek, roused him.

He had been, for a while, like a man in a trance, who sees through the golden mist the beautiful shapes of an Elysian vision, and hears the heavenly music of the spheres, while he lies there powerless alike to grasp the full joy of his translation or to confess his own unworthiness to bask in its heavenly sunshine. Only a moment before he had held Diane in his arms, the soft touch of her cheek was still warm on his, the fragrance of her shadowy hair lay still upon his shoulder; yet he felt the intensity of his moral solitude, the depth of the gulf that yawned between her warm faith in him and his hidden shame.