* 
 
 
 LOVE IS A SPIRIT 
 
 21 flovel 
 
 BY 
 
 JULIAN HAWTHORNE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
 
 1896 
 
Copyright, 1896, by JULIAN HAWTHORNE. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
LOVE IS A SPIRIT 
 
 " Thy Hornbook I cannot spell- 
 In me all Wisdom's Secrets dwell. 
 Prove me Fool by Rule of Thumb 
 Blind without me were Heaven, and dumb." 
 
 [OR an hour before he came the girl 
 had been sitting nearly motionless 
 on the bench overlooking the rose-garden. 
 
 She leaned against a pillar ; her right arm, 
 bare to the elbow, lay along the broad mar- 
 ble balustrade of the veranda ; the coolness 
 of the smooth stone was grateful in the 
 tropic afternoon. It was an afternoon that 
 drowsed and dreamed and distilled fragrance. 
 The May rains had been sending herald 
 showers before them for a week past, and 
 
sky, mountains, trees, the whole flowery vo- 
 luptuous earth, were lulled in sensuous de- 
 light. Beauty was everywhere. 
 
 Beauty was everywhere ; but though the 
 full white lids of the girl's eyes were only 
 half closed, she was unregardful of things 
 without. She was gazing quietly into the 
 realms of her soul. 
 
 The spiritual world, inhabited unawares by 
 the human spirit even during life in the body, 
 is at rare intervals open to consciousness. 
 Ordinarily, as the ripple on the surface of 
 water obscures the secrets of the depths, so 
 physical sense obscures our vision of the in- 
 ward life ; but the depths are there, and the 
 recesses of the soul let what turmoil may 
 prevail without remain forever tranquil. 
 
 For conflict belongs to transitory existence 
 only; the immortal is unassailable, and moves 
 unceasingly forward in a current too pro- 
 found to be perceived. Beings whom no end 
 threatens, who after eternities of divine activ- 
 ity to beatify their fellows and beautify their 
 
world find themselves immeasurably more 
 able than at first for such there are no 
 clashings of will with law, no discrepancy be- 
 tween means and ends, no discords. They 
 hear the rhymings of truth with love, see 
 forms of use transfigured into beauty, and 
 their hearts beat in the rhythm of common 
 effort towards universal good. 
 
 Upon this inner world, through the portals 
 of her virgin heart, the girl looked. Her 
 heart, though virgin, was not vacant. Pure 
 youth is always weaving, out of its beliefs, 
 intuitions, and aspirations, the image of an 
 ideal being. To each of us the opposite sex 
 is a mirror reflecting the reverse image of 
 our own best selves, which, because reversed, 
 is made pregnant of the life which isolation 
 never can engender. Over this image of all 
 lovableness the maiden throws the glamour 
 of whatever is nobly masculine, while the 
 man consecrates it with womanliness. 
 
 But the image requires a concrete nucleus 
 on which to model it. Some fair face or 
 
tender voice, some manly look or picturesque 
 action, gives the hint ; and straightway the 
 creation glows with life and beauty. 
 
 Fully to realize the ideal is a more critical 
 matter. Yet, as a child arrays with the graces 
 of its imagination the first block of wood 
 that comes to hand, and finds it lovable, so 
 has the rankest pretender a fair chance of 
 being accepted as the true prince or princess. 
 But while the child may throw aside its doll, 
 the fable of Frankenstein pictures the plight 
 of the deceived lover. 
 
 But how happens it that, in a question to 
 answer which the finest faculties of the soul 
 are addressed, mistake should be so often 
 made? The rankest obtuse on -looker may 
 see at a glance the error to which the exqui- 
 site organization of the lover is incorrigibly 
 blind. 
 
 Omne ignotum pro magnifico. Youth and 
 maiden, in the mystic glory of pubescence, 
 are not as men and women of the world, cate- 
 chising the very Eros and Psyche; rather are 
 
5 
 
 they prone to canonize the devil. The 
 more they abhor evil in the abstract, the 
 less ready are they to credit it in the con- 
 crete. 
 
 Moreover, as the full cloud yearns to give 
 itself in rain, as the winged bird fain would 
 fly, as the trained athlete chafes to put forth 
 his strength, so must needs the potent lov- 
 er approve potency by act. This limitless 
 wealth was given to spend, and spent it 
 shall be, though cast at the feet of swine. 
 The first impulse of love is to give ; the 
 craving to receive a like gift in return comes 
 not till afterwards. 
 
 It is in that craving that the frailty of the 
 complex emotion lies. To love is safety and 
 increase, for its prototype is the Creator ; 
 but to suffer love is perilous, since its depen- 
 dence is upon the creature. Yet to this end 
 were we born to love and be beloved ; the 
 passion is as sweet as the action ; and both 
 must mingle to make the full draught of 
 human happiness. But what marvel if, seek- 
 
ing for our birthright, rich in instinct and 
 poor in experience, we are misled by wan- 
 dering fires? or can any danger, incurred 
 for such a birthright, be too great? 
 
 The girl suddenly changed her position, 
 and looked towards the right. The height 
 on which the house stood sloped abruptly 
 to a plain, bordered by a forest, from which 
 emerged a road that crossed the plain in the 
 direction of the house. A man on horseback 
 had ridden forth from the wood and was 
 cantering down the road. 
 
 She watched his approach with an intent- 
 ness that made her soul shine through her 
 eyes. There was a tightness about her heart, 
 caused by wide emotions surging through it, 
 as ocean tides rush through a Hellespont. 
 With a sigh the pressure was relieved, and 
 sparkling currents of delight frolicked 
 through her veins, and changed the quick 
 pallor of her cheeks to rose. Her brain was 
 confused with vague images of joy at hand. 
 She was unconscious of her body ; she never 
 
knew that she strained her soft hands to- 
 gether till the serpent's head on her ring bit 
 the flesh. Physical sensation was dominated 
 by the music in her soul, made by love, which 
 is a spirit. 
 
II 
 
 '"Shall Impotence the Burden bear, 
 While Strength goes free as weightless air?' 
 Aye, since all Powers, mete and bound 
 In yonder helpless Babe are found !" 
 
 }UT though lovers are wont to lament 
 the intractability of matter, it is yet 
 a dispensation for which did their wisdom 
 equal their ardor they should be passing 
 grateful. 
 
 We do not give infants naked poniards to 
 play with. Sharp points and edges must be 
 sheathed to them until they learn prudence. 
 Now, the scimitar of Saladin itself is dull 
 beside the disincarnate soul ; and mortal life 
 is the sheath divinely appointed to afford us 
 opportunity to learn the handling thereof, 
 without too much risk of cutting our ringers 
 or stabbing ourselves to the heart. 
 
Lovers cry out against the weariness and 
 delay of time and space, which separate them 
 by hours and days, by seas and mountains ; 
 and denounce the clumsiness of the flesh, 
 which is always deflecting or misinterpreting 
 the lightning messages of the mind. But 
 these obstacles are in truth beneficent coun- 
 sellors, which not only guard the priceless 
 privilege of second thought, but offer us the 
 jewels of patience, fortitude, reason, faith, 
 and hope jewels created by our struggle 
 against the inertia of circumstance and the 
 subtleties of temptation. 
 
 Even though, as the old theologians main- 
 tained, there be damnation in matter, it is cer- 
 tain that salvation would be impossible with- 
 out it. Conceive yourself, if you can, born 
 inexperienced into a state of being where 
 thought is presence; where the interiors of 
 heart and mind are pictured in the exterior 
 environment ; where there is no interval be- 
 tween desire and accomplishment, will and 
 act ; above all, where that balance between 
 
10 
 
 good and evil which we call free will, which 
 is the very sculptor of character, is non- 
 existent imagine yourself launched in such 
 an ocean, with every sail of hereditary evil 
 spread, with no pilot memory to stand at the 
 helm, and no warning chart of the deadly 
 whirlpool of selfhood to admonish your 
 course withal. Where and how would that 
 voyage end ? 
 
 No ; to be an angel, even in the proper 
 world of angels, is no easy thing. Mortal 
 existence, whether merry or not, can hardly 
 be too long or too material to fit us for such 
 an undertaking. Even the seeming empty 
 fprms and ceremonies of social intercourse 
 are precious leading-strings and danger-sig- 
 nals, without which fatal calamities would 
 be yet more frequent than they are. Blessed, 
 then, be the body, and all that it involves ! 
 in itself it is an unadulterated benefit to its 
 owner, and whatever mischief he contrives 
 to accomplish through it would have been in- 
 definitely more virulent but for its restraint. 
 
Ill 
 
 "Costliest raiment purse can buy 
 Flatters not like lover's eye, 
 Which pranks its object in such trim 
 As beggars Earth, makes Heaven dim." 
 
 |E AN WHILE the horseman has 
 passed the gate, reached the door, 
 dismounted, and traversed the central hall of 
 the house. He stepped out on the veranda ; 
 as he did so the girl rose from the bench 
 with the air of having been unexpectedly 
 aroused from reverie. 
 
 In a world of pure spirit the interposition 
 of such a shield would have been impracti- 
 cable. But, in fact, this actual moment of 
 meeting hands and eyes affected her as an 
 anticlimax. No real man could ever hope 
 to rival his own heroic figure in the heart of 
 the woman who loves him and has just been 
 
12 
 
 thinking how divine he is ! Nor can any en- 
 counter of mortal lovers fulfil their forecast 
 of it. But it must, moreover, be noted that 
 in this case love had not overtly been in 
 question on either side. The man was an 
 agreeable acquaintance of comparatively re- 
 cent introduction a welcome help towards 
 disposing of the diminishing remnant of the 
 tropic season ; and the woman was a charm- 
 ing girl, fresh and unsophisticated, in whom 
 a gentleman who had had some experience 
 of the hollowness of the world could not but 
 feel a genial interest. 
 
 Such at least was the appearance, in this 
 world of appearances, to be invalidated by 
 conjecture only. It is wonderful under how 
 many veils and disguises this spirit, love, 
 conceals itself, as though aware of its own 
 dangerous quality, and solicitous to protect 
 its votaries to the last. Albeit the unrivalled 
 and unique despot of mankind, it may plau- 
 sibly be construed as indifference, coquetry, 
 compassion, friendship, courtesy, rudeness, 
 
13 
 
 contempt, and hatred ; nor are any so long 
 blind to its true character as are those par- 
 ticular persons to whom its recognition is of 
 most vital consequence. 
 
 " Here I am again, you see, Miss Yolande, 
 ready to risk wearing out my welcome ! Have 
 I done it, at last ?" 
 
 With what a lovely frankness she put 
 forth from the shoulder her virginal arm, 
 letting it fall again to her side, after her 
 hand had touched his ! What maidenly dig- 
 nity she had ; and how formidably searching 
 was the slow, shy regard of her long, dark 
 eyes! 
 
 "You will sooner wear out your horse's 
 shoes than your welcome here, Mr. Strath- 
 spey !" 
 
 How this man made other things seem far 
 off or invisible ! He was real almost too 
 real ! It was hard to think beyond the out- 
 lines of his figure that light, athletic fig- 
 ure, booted and spurred, with head erect, and 
 lean, masculine features. Something in him 
 
14 
 
 whether or not you quite liked it held 
 you. 
 
 "I'll have him shod with chilled steel 
 henceforth." 
 
 "Why not ride Pegasus, who needs no 
 shoes at all, and goes swift as thought ?" 
 
 " By Jove ! if I only could catch him ! 
 But I am a man who is obliged to keep on 
 the earth ; the winged horse would throw 
 me at the first bound, and rid you of me once 
 for all." 
 
 How keen and yet soft was his way of 
 looking at one ! How handsome he was 
 when he smiled ! It showed the strength 
 and fineness of his face. What a thorough 
 man he was, from head to heel ! 
 
 " Come on a tortoise, if you must only 
 come." 
 
 Never was there another face so singular 
 and absorbing as hers. The subtlety of its 
 forms defied definition. A touch of the 
 Greek, but with a soul in it ; a far sugges- 
 tion of the Sphinx, but spiritualized. Or 
 
was it pure modern, the flower of eighteen 
 centuries of Christendom ? Ah, well, it was 
 Yolande expression incarnate : a shimmer- 
 ing flow of mysteries and meanings of mys- 
 teries that were meanings, and of meanings 
 that were mysteries. 
 
 " Will you have some tea ?" 
 
 " No, thanks. Our talk sha'n't be stran- 
 gled with beverages." 
 
 Their talk ! What had they been saying 
 to each other ? Words are wheels, on which 
 you roll along and dream other things. But 
 that deep voice of his vibrated in her ears, 
 and reached a secret place low in her bosom, 
 whence she took her breath. It said things 
 interior to words, which she loved to hear. 
 
 " Shall we walk in the rose-garden, then ? 
 and you can smoke a cigar." 
 
 " By Jove, yes ! the rose-garden. I never 
 yet had roses enough." 
 
 " Come with me and you shall have them." 
 
IV 
 
 " Dawn's delicate Disdain, rank Noon, 
 Eve's Roses, star-discovering Night, 
 Sea, holy Hills but hold my tune, 
 Quick creatures of my Will and Sight." 
 
 I 
 
 [S they entered the garden the sun 
 
 sank behind the battlements of a 
 thunder-cloud, which the powers of the air 
 had been building along the western ho- 
 rizon. 
 
 The garden might have covered a couple 
 of acres ; but the rose-bushes were so high 
 and thick, and the paths such Daedalian 
 windings, that, once in the garden, you lost 
 all sense of its extent. Its dimensions and 
 beauty became subjective of the measure 
 and quality of the beholder's soul, and to 
 these two, at this time, may have appeared 
 to touch the verge of the infinite. The roses 
 
I? 
 
 of all Persian poetry were here, and the con- 
 ditions (so thought the visitor) such as the 
 imagination of a Saadi could not have sur- 
 passed. 
 
 Tropical twilights are brief, and the phan- 
 tasmagory of the sunset marshalled itself 
 swiftly. Early in the afternoon there had 
 been a storm amidst the western mountain- 
 tops, too distant for its thunderous accom- 
 paniment to reach the ear, though the light- 
 ning flashes had been visible, and swept by 
 wind-gusts in aerial curves the brown, filmy 
 curtains of descending rain. All the while, 
 high above the shadowy tumult, the upper 
 sky was serene and pure, with shreds of 
 snowy cloud, diaphanous as frost on a win- 
 dow-parie, drawn out upon its tender blue. 
 
 At the going down of the sun the storm, 
 broken into fragments, drifted in heavy 
 masses athwart the clear luminousness be- 
 yond, and gathered in frowning walls and 
 towers of vaporous masonry. These in their 
 turn were shattered, and the detached heaps 
 
i8 
 
 of ruin assumed the likeness of amorphous 
 monsters and grotesque figures, the rout of 
 a titanic battle. By imperceptible degrees 
 disintegrating and recombining, they were 
 tossed in darkling relief against the horizon. 
 
 The translucency of the lower atmosphere 
 was tinged with hues faint and delicate at 
 first as the rainbow shadings on a fairy's 
 wings, but ever glowing and kindling, till 
 you would have thought that the jewelled 
 walls of the Celestial City had dissolved in 
 air, and were flowing in prismatic tides above 
 the earth. A broad river of spiritual chryso- 
 prase stretched along the west, islanded 
 with gold and crimson, and with shores of 
 fretted violet, upon which the sinister le- 
 gions of the storm pursued one another 
 with wild contortions. Towards the zenith 
 the sky still kept its azure ; and the moon, 
 three days old, both her delicate horns point- 
 ing upwards, seemed slowly to approach the 
 earth. 
 
 The girl and the man sauntered side by 
 
19 
 
 side along the winding paths. The bushes, 
 bourgeoning outward, inclined the two fig- 
 ures towards each other in gentle recurrent 
 contacts. Beauty, and the hour, wrought an 
 interior mood, from which, after a while, they 
 reached an imaginative vein, half playful, 
 half serious. 
 
 " It is like hearing distant music when you 
 are in a reverie, to see that," said she, indi- 
 cating by a movement of the head the glo- 
 ries of the sky. 
 
 " It makes me think of a battle in Homer," 
 he returned " the heroes struggling together 
 gigantically; and those shadowy figures hov- 
 ering above them are the Immortals, encour- 
 aging the Trojans or the Greeks." 
 
 " The plains of Troy never looked so 
 beautiful as those spaces of green and rose. 
 Such shapes and colors are like a picture of 
 thoughts that never can be spoken." 
 
 " It is ominous that dark wrack," said he, 
 " It is like the shadow of mortality, that 
 looms and passes." 
 
20 
 
 "You cannot separate it from the glory 
 behind it," she answered. " We ourselves 
 are darkness; but the light that is not we 
 gives us meaning and nobility." 
 
 That soft touch of her shoulder against 
 his arm it was more than a touch ; it lin- 
 gered, and made every nerve a duct of sweet- 
 ness, pouring like honey into his heart. Was 
 she aware of it ? Was not the very sweet- 
 ness due to the harmony between them? 
 Were they not thinking each other's thoughts 
 alive with the same emotions ? If not, all 
 intuition was a lie. 
 
 But no ! there could be and must be noth- 
 ing of the sort. It was well for him to love 
 her she could represent for him all pure and 
 lovely things ; but it would be far from well 
 were she to love him. Let this vindicate 
 the worthiness of his devotion that by no 
 word or intimation would he ever permit her 
 to suspect it. She did not love him ; she felt 
 in him merely the generous confidence of a 
 girl in an honest man much older than her- 
 
21 
 
 self. She loved beauty, romance, noble con- 
 duct, and high ideals ; she had never sought 
 or found an individual embodiment of these 
 qualities. She recognized and enjoyed in 
 him an apt and friendly sympathizer with 
 the graceful abstractions in which her mind 
 loved to dwell and that was all. There 
 could be, for her, no peril in their inter- 
 course ; and as for him, if he chose to expose 
 his heart to the delicious stab of her un- 
 conscious dagger, that was his affair. 
 
 Moreover, if this were self-abnegation, still 
 more was it wisdom. Sunlight on a distant 
 mountain-summit is more exquisite than that 
 which falls around us ; and so is love that can- 
 not be ours than that which is in our embrace. 
 The severest test of the soul's strength is 
 possession. True passion is a paradox fire 
 burning in ice ; within that medium it is opal- 
 ine and divine ; but once the ice is melted 
 nothing but an earthly flame remains. 
 
 So they sauntered on, and were hidden 
 out of sight amongst the roses. 
 
"Beauty cheapening Arts, 
 
 Fragrance Joy bestows; 
 Love in virgin Hearts 
 Seeking I found a Rose!" 
 
 un 
 
 "HE heavy blooms, weighting the 
 
 slender sprays, bent them across the 
 path ; the thorns caught the thin fabric of 
 her white dress, and he pricked his ringers 
 in freeing her from them. They smiled 
 at the thorns, but the flowers recalled them 
 to a serious felicity. Roses hung higher 
 than their heads ; roses swept their hands 
 as they passed ; they trod upon fallen 
 showers of rose petals. There were roses 
 of many colors crimson, pink, white, yel- 
 low, in countless delicate gradations ; small 
 and fairy-like, sumptuous and large; some 
 shut up tight in baby buds, others half 
 
23 
 
 unfolding their glowing fingers from their 
 golden hearts, others again disclosing the 
 treasure with a lovely frankness, as who 
 should say, " We are the flowers of love 
 love us !" But these were fragile ; at a touch 
 they made themselves into a rosy shower, 
 and were not. The buds were a promise 
 unconsummated ; only rarely bloomed a per- 
 fect rose, vigorous and flawless, which could 
 be plucked and smelled, and yet endure. 
 
 She gave him such a one, remarking, " It 
 will last till you get home ; and a rose that 
 lasts an hour will live forever, for in an hour 
 we can learn to know it well enough to rec- 
 ognize it in heaven." 
 
 As she turned to him with the last words 
 his heart beat stronger ; so close to his was 
 the gleaming beauty of her eyes, the warm 
 fragrance of her mouth. Every feature of 
 her presence wrought upon him : the flowing 
 curves about her waist and bosom, the undu- 
 lation of her supple flank, the pale glow of 
 her arms and bust through the semi-trans- 
 
24 
 
 parent lawn, the rhythm of her breathing. 
 How well she set her foot upon the ground, 
 the elastic knee straightening as she swayed 
 forward to the next step! Oh, innocent al- 
 lurement and sweet health of virginal wom- 
 anhood ! Oh, mystic sex, the power of pow- 
 ers ! 
 
 " There would be no roses," said he, " if 
 it were not for girls like you. " 
 
 She smiled her recognition of that spirit- 
 ual appreciation. When she smiled no man 
 could help but worship her. The light of 
 her happiness seemed to radiate through 
 her face. How could anything mortal be 
 so heavenly bright ? 
 
 Happy, in truth, she was. The man be- 
 side her stimulated her soul like an elixir. 
 She felt a personal delight in all appertain- 
 ing to him : the manly carriage of his shoul- 
 ders ; the firm, shaven cheeks and chin ; his 
 hands, strong and full of meaning, with fine, 
 crisp hair on the wrists and the back. How 
 beautiful to be so strong and fearless to be a 
 
25 
 
 man ! Were there in her, or in the world, any 
 good that he had not, how joyfully would she 
 bestow it on him ! He could crush her in a 
 moment, if he would ; but he would not 
 he would protect her, because he was good 
 and she was helpless. How beautiful to be 
 protected by him, to surrender to him, to 
 let his nobility and generosity decree her 
 laws and acts ! Till now she had valued 
 her independence above all things ; what 
 delight, then, to give it up to him ! But 
 perhaps he would not care for her gifts. 
 Truly, he did not need them ; he was suffi- 
 cient to himself. Ah, but there were sweet 
 things that she could do for him which he 
 could not but be glad to accept, let him be 
 as proud as he might. 
 
 These thoughts and feelings were not out- 
 wardly manifested, nor were they even in the 
 foreground of her mind ; training and hered- 
 ity kept them back. But they were more 
 real than what was suffered to appear. And, 
 after all, they were manifest, though not by 
 
26 
 
 conventional signs. Essential woman is or- 
 ganized emotion ; in the presence of what 
 she loves how can she be hidden? And 
 what had Yolande to fear? If he loved her, 
 all was well; if he did not, nothing in this 
 world could make her feel a wound, no 
 other good could make life tolerable. It 
 were an insult to love to imagine such a 
 thing. But the dignity of womanhood was 
 in her keeping? Could dignity be based on 
 such a tenure? The highest glory of wom- 
 an was to love ; if she loved in vain, it was 
 death, perhaps, but how was it disgrace? 
 It would be disgrace to fear such a death. 
 It would be sweet to die. 
 
 As the dusk fell the perfume of the gar- 
 den became more sensibly delicious, as if the 
 visibility of the roses had been transmuted 
 into fragrance. It was a delicate swoon of 
 odors, in which what was material seemed 
 to pass into the plane of spirit. The two 
 entered a path which led them along the 
 boundary of the enclosure; over the wall 
 
27 
 
 extended the boughs of orange-trees, laden 
 with blossoms. He plucked a twig of these ; 
 and then they left the garden, remounted 
 the veranda, and sat down together beside 
 the marble balustrade. 
 
 " The last of the sunset and the first of the 
 moon, "said the girl; " I like this hour best." 
 
 " Have you often sunsets like that here in 
 the tropics and such moons ?" 
 
 " They are best now, just before the rains. 
 The air seems to me like a mighty nation 
 preparing for a crusade. There are signs 
 and portents, and gatherings of the hosts, 
 and splendid councils of the princes in their 
 shining armor, and processions with stream- 
 ing banners and rainbow robes ; and once in 
 a while dark hours of humiliation and pray- 
 er; and then dazzling tumults of hope and 
 rejoicing. I am always forgetting that you 
 are from the North," she added ; " but, after 
 all, all I know of you is that you are Mr. 
 Strathspey. Were you never in our island 
 till now?" 
 
28 
 
 " I should like to forget that I was ever 
 anywhere else," replied he, after a pause. 
 
 "Have you been unhappy?" she asked, 
 her low voice falling lower with innocent 
 sympathy. 
 
 He turned his head and looked at her with 
 a certain pregnant vehemence in his eyes. 
 But he restrained himself ; this was perilous 
 ground. To love was to hold sacred. Un- 
 less this girl was sacred to him, heaven 
 which meant immortality with her hereafter 
 was closed to him forever. And he must 
 not only himself abstain from speaking or 
 acting what looked towards love, but must 
 divert her also from the path in which (as he 
 could no longer but be aware) she was be- 
 ginning to walk. 
 
 " My child," said he, suddenly assuming 
 the smile of a man of the world, " I don't set 
 up to anything unique or wonderful ; and let 
 me tell you that nothing could be more won- 
 derful and unique than a man, old enough to 
 be your father, who had never been unhap- 
 
29 
 
 py." To himself he added, " Come ! that was 
 well put." 
 
 But she was at once conscious of the descent 
 to artificiality. " Why do you treat me so ?" 
 she demanded, with the terrible sincerity pos- 
 sible only to the pure and single-minded. 
 She looked at him seriously and unswerving- 
 ly. " Even a child may help a man, if he will 
 let her and I am more than a child !" 
 
 He dropped his eyes, and said, uneasily, 
 " The worst of a fellow's past is that it be- 
 comes the rudder of his future the pilot 
 that steers him, rather. If I told you " 
 He broke off. A dozen words more would 
 have swept danger from their path forever ; 
 but he could not get them out ; they seemed 
 too brutal. They would be irrevocable, too ; 
 and the danger, identical with her ignorance 
 of the truth, was to him the one sweet left in 
 the world, and he lacked resolution to de- 
 stroy it. 
 
 " If I told you all the annoyances life has 
 brought me, it would not only bore you, but 
 
3 
 
 I should get the blues myself. I think it 
 more sensible to enjoy the present. Don't 
 you?" 
 
 " We must understand a thing to enjoy it," 
 was her reply, "and you said just now that 
 the present is made of the past. But it wasn't 
 your biography I asked to know, but the 
 deeper thing the spiritual part. As it would 
 be if we met in heaven," she added, after 
 musing for a moment. 
 
 " You must come down to earth if we are 
 to meet," said he ; " I'm afraid I can't go up 
 to you." 
 
 " Oh, I am here," she returned, turning to 
 him with a lovely smile and gesture, as if to 
 say, " Touch me, and see." 
 
 The next moment she blushed. He passed 
 a hand over his face, and said, " Even here 
 there are obstacles. I am overstaying my 
 time." He took out his watch with an apol- 
 ogy, and glanced at it. " By Jove ! I must 
 
 go." 
 
 He half rose. " No !" she exclaimed, ve- 
 
hemently ; and involuntarily obeying the 
 throb of her heart, her hands went forth 
 with a gesture, as if to keep him in his 
 seat. 
 
 " Don't leave me alone," she went on, 
 quickly. " The others will be back before 
 long. Why and you didn't smoke your 
 cigar, after all ! You must have it now : let 
 me get you a match." 
 
 He put his hand on her wrist. " Stay 
 where you are," said he. 
 
 The change in his voice affected her as 
 much as his touch ; he perceived the vibra- 
 tion in her nerves, and, slowly relinquishing 
 his grasp, affected to search his pockets for 
 a cigar. 
 
 " It's all going wrong again, but I can't 
 help it," he said to himself. " Perhaps a 
 smoke may straighten me out. You're sure 
 you won't mind ?" he added aloud, pausing 
 with the poised match. 
 
 She only shook her head, gazing intently 
 at him through the dusk. Her bosom rose 
 
32 
 
 and fell at last with a heave no longer to be 
 repressed. She was a-tremble to the mar- 
 row, but happier, she thought, than she had 
 ever yet been. She felt as if she were being 
 carried through the air whirlingly, but to a 
 place of peace and delight. As he lit the 
 match and held the flame before his eyes, 
 she swiftly lifted her clasped hands to her 
 face and pressed against her cheek the wrist 
 which he had touched. When the veil of 
 flame had passed she appeared quite serene 
 and composed in the young moonlight. 
 
 He cleared his throat, and inhaled and 
 slowly emitted a cloud of smoke. 
 
 " It's an awfully lovely evening, sure 
 enough," he observed. 
 
 " Yes. See that strange cloud against the 
 bar of orange sky in the west. It looks like 
 a head a man's head." 
 
 " Do you think so ? Strikes me more 
 like " He checked himself suddenly. 
 
 " Were you going to say, like a woman's? 
 Yes perhaps it does now. But I often 
 
33 
 
 wonder I never see a cloud face that I rec- 
 ognize. Does this look like some one you 
 know?" 
 
 But he was silent, staring at the face as a 
 man stares at his enemy. In a few moments, 
 of course, it dissolved, and became but a 
 formless cloud drifting across the fading 
 western glow. 
 
 " I beg your pardon !" he said, turning to 
 her. " Yes queer things, likenesses. No 
 I can't say it did." 
 
 It was the shadow of the secret he would 
 not tell. 
 
VI 
 
 '*' They win that yield ; who love, withdraw ; 
 Veiled Reverence Things hid shall see. 
 I slew the Slave who feasted me, 
 To share thy Princely Pulse and Straw." 
 
 |HEY leaned against the marble rail- 
 ing fronting each other, but looking 
 out upon the rich obscurity of the garden. 
 The moon had begun to reign. 
 
 Though so young, her tropic vitality made 
 her mightier than in the north. The Cres- 
 cent of light hung below, a curving chalice 
 accurately poised. Its marvellous brightness 
 made it seem of larger radius than the dark 
 remnant of the sphere which was upheld 
 within it, an orbed jewel of sullen violet. 
 The brightness, though so effulgent, was not 
 cold and whitely virginal, like the icy gleam 
 of Diana's eyes when the gaze of doomed 
 
35 
 
 Actaeon burned in breathless ecstasy upon 
 what had been veiled even from Immortals. 
 No ; this was the Diana of Endymion, warm 
 with celestial passion, forsaking the austere 
 barrenness of chastity and glowing divinely 
 radiant from the first draught of her lover's 
 manhood. The light of her glory mingled 
 with the earth rather than shone upon it, 
 and everywhere wrought delicious mystery. 
 It seemed to dissolve the solid planet and 
 to recreate it in forms of spiritual poetry. 
 All was shadowy and plastic ; the great 
 mountains undulated a vaporous film ; the 
 plain was an expanse of luminous dusk, 
 through which one might plunge into a 
 magic underworld ; the darker masses of 
 the trees appeared to rest like clouds upon 
 the bosom of this terrestrial firmament, and 
 to be alike unsubstantial. Nor was this, 
 as in our thinner climate, a vision of mere 
 black and white ; there was the eloquence 
 of color, voluptuous and of infinite subtlety, 
 like memory of music in a dream. 
 
36 
 
 "Oh, I love it!" cried Yolande for 
 whom, unlike her distraught companion, no 
 barriers imprisoned her soul from pres- 
 ent delight in nature's innocent, profound 
 apocalypse. " I could not understand the 
 earth, or believe in it, but for such times 
 as these, when it seems as if a breath 
 might blow it away, and leave nothing but 
 heaven !" 
 
 "You seem very sure of there being a 
 heaven," said he. " Do you know that some 
 people think there is none?" 
 
 " No heaven ? There can be nothing else 
 except that very thought that there is 
 none." 
 
 He brushed off the ash of his cigar on the 
 marble. 
 
 "I need to feel the solid reality of the 
 planet," he said. 
 
 "There can be but one reality," she an- 
 swered, "and this" she sent her hands 
 abroad with a sweeping gesture, and brought 
 them back till the palms met " this cannot 
 
37 
 
 be it. Think how terrible if it were, in spite 
 of its beauty no, because of it." 
 
 "Yes, of course. . . . Nature the illusion 
 of sense . . ." mumbled he, perplexed to find 
 himself fingering the half -forgotten meta- 
 physics of distant college days. He could 
 not get in touch with the spontaneous vision 
 of this intuitive soul. Yolande was not a 
 metaphysician, she was a spirit. 
 
 " I love sunshine," she went on, " but I 
 shall love it with my whole heart only in 
 heaven. Here moonlight is best; it is the 
 truer light for earth. The sun makes all so 
 clear you can hardly remember it is but an 
 image, after all; but the moon gives you 
 back the unreality that is the truth." 
 
 " After asking me to stay with you, you 
 soar away from me," he said, after a little. 
 " My dwelling has been in what you call the 
 Unreality I could find a harder name for it 
 and I have no wings ; so these angelic 
 flights of yours make me lonely." 
 
 She turned slowly, inclining her body tow- 
 
38 
 
 ards him. Yes, there was a heaven indeed, 
 and that supple figure and moonlit face and 
 low voice were of its sound and substance. 
 
 " Lonely?" she repeated, slowly. 
 
 At this moment a truth presented itself to 
 Strathspey's mind. 
 
 Time and space as discipline are guides 
 to heaven, but misused become prompt and 
 plausible ministers of the devil. Though the 
 inertia of the body may as well hinder as help 
 good impulses, and thus negatively protect 
 the soul, yet this otherwise friendly associate 
 of ours owns a fatal power accorded to no 
 other agent in any plane of existence the 
 power, namely, to effect desecrations. Be- 
 tween evil and holy in the other world is 
 fixed a gulf impassable; but here an em- 
 bodied hell may embrace an incarnate heav- 
 en, or thrust its foul presence into the pene- 
 trail of the Lord's temple. For these crimes 
 the penalty is eternal. 
 
 Strathspey need but put forth a hand to 
 touch and draw Yolande to him ; with his 
 
39 
 
 bodily arms he might enfold her body ; but 
 inasmuch as a certain fact known to him and 
 not to her debarred him from marrying her, 
 this semblance of possession in time and 
 space must be bought at no less a price than 
 separation in eternity. Love and immortal- 
 ity would slip from his grasp, and only lust 
 and death remain in it. 
 
 This high and vital insight wrought upon 
 its subject but a transient effect. To have 
 been capable of it attested spiritual refine- 
 ment ; but he had so conducted his life as 
 to straiten its loftier capacities, and the in- 
 stincts of a lower range of feeling followed 
 hard upon the shining footprints of the pure 
 intuition. 
 
 The senses do not argue ; they wield a 
 power beyond logic. Awakened and warmed, 
 their voice is but an inarticulate cry for fru- 
 ition, come what may! Yolande was so 
 near ; her sphere so wooed him ; the sweet 
 intent of her heart was so contagious ; and 
 the idea of never never, for one instant ! 
 
40 
 
 yielding to its invitation was so intolerable 
 that his blood leaped up in mutiny. Oh, to 
 kiss her once no more ! 
 
 No sooner had the conception of this kiss 
 entered into him than he knew, in the mar- 
 row of his nature, that its reality was at 
 hand ; and the flash of that conviction lit up 
 for a moment the scenery of abrupt sum- 
 mits and abysses, amidst which his spirit 
 now walked. But he no longer wished to 
 see his moral environment; it had lost its 
 significance for him. He would focus him- 
 self upon Yolande. 
 
 Yet was he obscurely aware of a moral 
 revolution accomplishing in himself, closing 
 the upward channels of influx, and throwing 
 wide those that opened downward. He did 
 not regret it ; it left him at his ease. Temp- 
 tation the interior combat of good against 
 evil tortures only while it lasts ; the issue, 
 whichever side it favor, brings repose and 
 delight, since the man is then identified with 
 (as the case may be) the angel or the devil. 
 
Meanwhile he was heedful to flatter the 
 susceptibilities of his gentle nurture and 
 love of comely seeming by ignoring as yet 
 the more sinister biddings of his new mas- 
 ter. To kiss her once once in the lapse of 
 a lifetime to have verified the reality of mu- 
 tual passion was this yielding too much to 
 the frailty of poor human nature ? One sad, 
 delicious kiss of love and of farewell com- 
 bined it was little enough to claim. Nay, it 
 was a right due himself and her, to disallow 
 which were vain hypocrisy. From the ends 
 of the earth they two had met and loved ; 
 they must part so be it ; but not without 
 exchanging a pledge which should serve to 
 banish doubt and assure them of reunion 
 hereafter. 
 
 Enough of justification ! the delight of 
 the expectant senses, rushing up from be- 
 low into his brain, inundated with its impa- 
 tient flood the feeble barriers of conscience. 
 But he was not a man of the world for noth- 
 ing ; he knew the value of restraint in sensu- 
 
42 
 
 ality. An untried youth would have sprung 
 at once to consummation, but Strathspey, 
 warily voluptuous, would steal upon gratifi- 
 cation, missing not a throb of the kindling 
 senses, savoring every relish of pleasure. 
 When the culmination came it should have 
 suffered qualification in none of the preced- 
 ing stages. 
 
 So swift is the mind the pregnant inflec- 
 tion lent to her last word by Yolande had 
 scarce ceased to vibrate in his ears before his 
 response was determined. 
 
 " You can't understand loneliness," he 
 said, " because you've never known what it 
 is to feel that you are all want, and that 
 some other inaccessible person is all ful- 
 ness. Nor had I till I saw you, though I 
 had been lonely enough ! But I recollect 
 in some nursery tale about the man who 
 didn't believe in fairy - land, and got on 
 very well with his scepticism until he met a 
 person who knew the way there ; and she 
 meaning him a kindness gave him just one 
 
43 
 
 glimpse of the enchanted kingdom. From 
 that day he was a lost soul, wandering about 
 in blind and hopeless quest of a good and 
 beauty not created for him, which he had 
 better never have ... No !" he broke off, 
 letting fall the threadbare cloak of his fable 
 and rising impetuously to his feet, while his 
 voice sank and grew husky, " I won't say 
 that. I am better off for having met you. 
 It's worth a thousand such lives as mine to 
 have seen and known . you as I have to- 
 night !" 
 
 She had turned her face fairly towards 
 him, and remained with head erect and 
 eyes full opened, as the Egyptian lioness 
 sits in stone. Now she also rose, with a 
 slow and stately movement, and confronted 
 him. 
 
 But it was so long before she spoke that 
 he began to fear he had miscalculated, and 
 fallen into the crude error of over -confi- 
 dence. He had expected a tremulous and 
 faltering agitation, amidst which he would 
 
44 
 
 move to his goal as with the self-mistrust- 
 ful grace of one protesting his unworthiness. 
 He felt mistrustful in good earnest now, 
 and bit his lip ; was it possible he had made 
 himself ridiculous? 
 
 It was Yolande's greatness of soul he had 
 failed to gauge. Her silence was the pause 
 of a reverent and noble nature on the thresh- 
 old of voluntary and irrevocable change. 
 Her princely heart harbored no doubts of 
 the man she loved. As for his reference 
 to the " inaccessible," she thought he meant 
 no more than the old chivalric illusion the 
 knight never worthy in his own eyes of the 
 guerdon of his lady's favor. Her guileless 
 honesty endowed him with scruples more 
 generous than he had ingenuity to frame : 
 and she sought so to make the gift of her- 
 self to him that the true benefactor should 
 seem to be himself. 
 
 At last she said, "That enchanted king- 
 dom if you care to be its king " and 
 stopped, feeling that no parable, however 
 
45 
 
 graceful, was of dignity worthily to bear 
 her simple meaning. 
 
 She slightly raised her arms, with the 
 palms of her hands towards him, and said, 
 in a voice like the murmur of a distant 
 
 bell, 
 
 " If you care for me, I am yours." 
 
VII 
 
 " Me would the Dragon slay 
 Shield, Spear flung I away ! 
 A Holy Dove I came 
 He burned in his own Flame!" 
 
 'HERE is a moment when to the 
 pure in heart this seeming amor- 
 phous and unwieldy universe (sprawling 
 yonder beyond Arcturus and nebular spi- 
 rals, and here vanishing again, despite help 
 of lenses, in infinite microscopic perspec- 
 tives) suddenly, obedient to the omnipo- 
 tent vibration of an inspired heart, slips 
 from behind the rigid screen of the letter, 
 and appears transfigured, a spirit divinely 
 human, of substance and form correspond- 
 ent with angelic love and wisdom, and ac- 
 knowledging a true infinity in the eternal 
 instant of a lover's kiss. 
 
47 
 
 Into the tremulous passion of that mar- 
 riage of melting lips flow all tender mean- 
 ings and potent harmonies inhabiting and 
 sustaining the exquisite hypocrisy of nature. 
 It solves the riddle of the Sphinx, sunder- 
 ing with its gossamer touch the adamantine 
 bonds of time and space, and irradiating 
 with immortal human light the alien ob- 
 scurities of mortality. All the laborious 
 languages of the world and the literatures 
 which embody them convey no significance 
 more vital than is disclosed in this inarticu- 
 late greeting of sex to sex. 
 
 Yolande felt herself taken and held ; dur- 
 ing a breath or two something apart from 
 her will delayed her yielding; she seemed 
 traversing distances immeasurable, weighted 
 and yet winged with awe and wonder, as at 
 passing from the dim womb of dreams to 
 naked, dazzling, palpitating life. But she 
 was drawn onward ; her bosom must im- 
 press its softness upon the firm strength of 
 his body ; she saw his face nearer to hers 
 
48 
 
 than seemed credible too near to be dis- 
 cerned, save as a dark, overshadowing, in- 
 drawing power. Her eyelids involuntarily 
 fell, that she might behold the invisible: 
 then came the apocalyptic touch ! A mes- 
 sage of vital flame, scarce known upon the 
 lips ere tingling couriers had borne it to all 
 regions of her being, near and far ; welding 
 to the male the female fibres of her life, 
 and changing her from maid to woman. 
 She felt the masculine more intimately hers 
 than aught of her own had ever been ; and 
 saw, in instantaneous vision, her very self in 
 him. The creative mystery, simple as sub- 
 lime, was unveiled to her illuminated soul, 
 and showed her, in human marriage, but re- 
 union of the parts of a divinely planned 
 antecedent whole. 
 
 Meanwhile the agent of her spiritual in- 
 crease was, for his own part, already entering 
 the shadows of torment. 
 
 At that moment of the embrace the per- 
 fume of the orange-blossom, idly plucked in 
 
49 
 
 the garden while he was still a man, had 
 stolen to his nostrils, and summoned from 
 the past a scene in which the original of the 
 cloud-sculptured countenance had borne a 
 part with him. His heart rose in hate 
 against it, but was powerless to dissipate the 
 image of that smiling malice ; it moulded 
 itself as a mask over the pure features of 
 Yolande, and its curling lips seemed even 
 to intercept the kiss for the sake of which 
 he was abdicating honor. It turned to bit- 
 terness and confusion the sensual ecstasies 
 for which he had bargained, yet forced him 
 to feign enthusiasm, lest this new-crowned 
 young queen of love suspect his fealty. He 
 had marred his delight and lost her, for she 
 was rapt out of his reach by that very joy 
 which transfigured her in conjoining her to 
 the lover whom she deemed him to be. In 
 the Paradise whose gates he had opened to 
 her he himself could have no share: those 
 gates had closed upon her, and his way was 
 barred by the flaming swords of the cher- 
 
5Q 
 
 ubim. Yet must he play out the role, and 
 profess to pace by her side along the thymy 
 paths, while in truth he was gnashing his 
 teeth unknown and unpitied in the outer 
 darkness. 
 
 But this was intolerable. If there were no 
 means of getting where she was, might he 
 not nevertheless draw her back to himself? 
 She was but human, after all ! 
 
 As this question insinuated itself within 
 him, the answer, like a serpent, wriggled 
 across his mind, and was hidden again in 
 obscurity of its own engendering. But he 
 did not miss the hint of the crawling base- 
 ness. The snake which had dragged down 
 stainless Eve from her high estate lurked in 
 Eden still, ever alert to repeat the eternal 
 infamy. Yolande loved and trusted him : 
 her trust could be betrayed, her love cor- 
 rupted, and she herself or what was left 
 of her become the testimony of his tri- 
 umph. 
 
 When a man voluntarily cuts loose from 
 
good he plunges into hell headforemost. 
 The higher degrees of his nature are the first 
 to be depraved. But his evil harmony with 
 himself endows him with a temporary power. 
 Strathspey's eyes brightened ; his faltering 
 nerves were restrung ; he met Yolande's gaze 
 firmly, and scrupled not to peer deep into 
 that shadowy translucence. It was pretty to 
 prattle of angels; but here in his arms, her 
 pliant body undulating in touch with his, 
 was a breathing feminine temptation, whose 
 fragrant lips of flesh and humid, gleaming 
 eyes called for anything but abstractions and 
 moralities. It was well to set bounds before- 
 hand ; but human nature, once aroused, takes 
 things into its own hands, and carries them to 
 their natural consummation. He had thought 
 to end with a kiss; perhaps he might; he 
 had at any rate begun with one. 
 
 What man, fairly tempted, had ever final- 
 ly prevailed against temptation? The temp- 
 tation might be inadequate, the subject lack 
 virile integrity, or opportunity fail ; but to 
 
52 
 
 be tempted was to yield, since only those 
 ripe to succumb were open to the lure. 
 
 Thus reassured, Strathspey, his lips against 
 hers, muttered through his teeth, " My dar- 
 ling ! can it be true? You love me !" 
 
 The words, despite their good intrinsic 
 quality, rang false in his own ears: it being 
 the misfortune of the sensual counterpart 
 of love to vulgarize whatsoever it touches. 
 True love, forever unprecedented, imparts 
 its freshness to its instruments, and the dull- 
 est commonplace in word or act comes from 
 it crowned with rarity: for the source is di- 
 vine and infinite. But the other passion, 
 emanating from the corporeal degree of self- 
 hood, inevitably repeats its one base note 
 in every deliverance, and infects with its es- 
 sential staleness the most noble phrase or 
 gesture. It cannot be helped ; the fruit of 
 profanations, if sweet on the tongue, is bitter 
 in the belly, and fatal withal to life. Its 
 votaries have their reward. 
 
 But if that old serpent still crawls in Eden, 
 
53 
 
 the Divine Humanity, in these days, also 
 abides there ; and the pure-hearted are envi- 
 roned with its sphere, the effect whereof is ei- 
 ther to avert evil communications or to trans- 
 form them into good. Yolande perceived 
 nothing of the harm which threatened her. 
 
 With a gesture modest as impassioned 
 she laid her sweet palms upon his face and 
 pushed him away from her. 
 
 11 Let me go I want to think !" she said, 
 breathless and rosy, a smile shining through 
 tear-drops in her eyes. "Oh, you have 
 kissed me, sir! No: we must be apart a 
 little." 
 
 " We've been too much apart already : 
 come!" 
 
 But she drew back a step, breathing deep, 
 and looking at him with a tender wonder. He 
 could not follow her moods ; but this seemed 
 like coquetry. The male brutality latent in 
 him began to bristle through the suavity of 
 training. 
 
 " Yolande ! M 
 
54 
 
 She kissed her white hand to him and 
 courtesied. " Mr. Strathspey !" 
 
 "Are you laughing at me? Don't call me 
 that !" he exclaimed, roughly, angrily con- 
 scious of being worsted in this encounter. 
 
 She seemed scarcely to hear him. She 
 turned from him, and looked out across the 
 valley, fetching a long, delectable sigh, and 
 lifting her white chin, while her fingers wan- 
 dered over the delicate hair at her temples. 
 
 " Let me think !" she repeated, in an inward 
 voice. " We must be in order now like the 
 other angels ! Oh, what a plunge from time 
 to eternity! Is the world where we left it?" 
 She glanced upward. " There is the moon !" 
 
 The moon ! Strathspey frowned and red- 
 dened; he was letting himself be made ab- 
 surd. This delicious incoherence of Yolande 
 the bewilderment of a soul apotheosized 
 at the amazing accost of love appeared to 
 his debased intelligence as nothing more 
 than coquettish affectation. He would put 
 an end to it! 
 
55 
 
 He stepped forward, caught her hand, and 
 kissed it violently. Contrary to his expec- 
 tation, she did not resist, but permitted him 
 his will with it. 
 
 "Listen to me, sweet!" he said, with a 
 clumsy utterance. "Your people may be 
 back here any moment. What's the good of 
 acting like this ? We are wasting our oppor- 
 tunity" 
 
 At that point his unchained eyes, roving 
 here and there, were arrested by hers, in 
 which was dawning a mysterious, inner 
 smile. This so disconcerted him that he 
 dropped her hand and flung himself upon 
 the bench. He planted his elbows on his 
 knees, gripped his hands together, and bent 
 down his head. 
 
 " Do you play with a man who loves 
 you ?" he growled. 
 
 She made no answer, but he felt her seat 
 herself beside him, so close that the white 
 film of her skirt drifted over his thigh. She 
 leaned nearer yet, but he did not move un- 
 
56 
 
 til her silence constrained him sullenly to 
 turn towards her. 
 
 A murmur of laughter, low and sweet, 
 came brook-like from her throat and broke 
 in aerial waves over his heated senses. The 
 serpent in him, striving to hold its own, 
 writhed outrageously for an instant ; but 
 its infernal life was quelled by Yolande's 
 look of clear light and living fire, and it 
 subsided out of sight. Strathspey, who had 
 identified its evil being with his own, was 
 by its defection left wellnigh exanimate: 
 he sat, dulled and cold, all vigor gone out 
 of him. 
 
 But through his stupidness penetrated the 
 bell-like music of Yolande's voice, in which 
 passion and innocence chimed as one. The 
 ripple of tender mirth was gone, leaving a 
 tremulous solemnity. 
 
 "You make me think that I know love 
 better than you. I gave myself to you, 
 and you took me !" She paused, breathing 
 more quickly. "You made me see and 
 
57 
 
 feel " Her voice failed ; she covered her 
 eyes with her hands, presently adding, in a 
 deep whisper, " I cannot say it !" 
 
 A huge moth, black as night, appeared 
 and hovered before one of the trumpet- 
 blossoms of the white stephanotis that 
 clambered up a pillar of the veranda. So 
 noiseless was the whir of its dusky wings it 
 seemed a phantom. After peering awhile 
 into the depths of the flower it suddenly 
 vanished, as if annihilated where it hung. 
 
 " God gave us this/' Yolande went on, 
 folding her hands and drawing them in 
 upon her bosom. " He sent us to each 
 other not for an hour, or for a lifetime, 
 but forever to love each other forever! 
 Opportunity !" 
 
 Strathspey flinched inwardly at the ac- 
 cent of divine scorn which she threw into 
 that word. But the unconscious irony of 
 her entire view of their relation suffocated 
 him. He said, with difficulty, " Have some 
 mercy for flesh and blood !" 
 
58 
 
 Her hand went forth with a princely 
 movement and rested upon his. What vital 
 warmth was in her touch ! 
 
 " Since I am yours, so is my body with 
 me," she said. " You are to love it for my 
 sake. And I so love yours" her fingers 
 involuntarily tightened their grasp "that 
 I almost fear to forget that it is only the 
 servant of my lover his messenger: to 
 forget Arthur for Lancelot !" 
 
 The clear serenity of her speech was 
 checked by an incoming tide of troubled 
 thought. Some repugnant agitation wrought 
 and grew within her. All at once she rose 
 to her feet, panting and pale. 
 
 " Don't let it come between us !" she ex- 
 claimed in a changed voice, which rose and 
 fell turbulently. " Unless we hold to our 
 highest we shall lose each other ! We would 
 better die now than bury ourselves alive in 
 that dungeon ! . . . Oh, never honor this 
 clumsy, lying image of me more than me ! 
 I could never forgive you ! I am jealous of 
 
59 
 
 its lips and arms ! If they should steal you 
 from me or yours rob me of you . . ." 
 
 The ominous intonation of her voice, as 
 of a sibyl's denouncing judgment, abruptly 
 stopped, as though its limit of faculty were 
 reached. She was standing erect as a Greek 
 pillar, her hands clinched by her sides, and 
 all the storm of her emotion glooming and 
 lightening in her eyes. Strathspey, who was 
 also on his feet, stared and blinked before 
 her. She was herself the cherub with the 
 flaming sword ! 
 
 She moved towards him. His nerves con- 
 tracted, as at the threat of a thunderbolt ; 
 the flash of that mystic sword seemed poised 
 against his actual life. Her face seemed like 
 that of a spirit disincarnate, owning no kin- 
 dred with mortality. She gazed into him 
 and said, in a slow, fierce whisper, 
 
 " I could be terrible !" 
 
 And then, ere he could catch his breath, 
 came another change, sudden and over- 
 whelming. Her arms were about his neck, 
 
6o 
 
 her cheek against his, he felt the beating of 
 her heart, and heard her voice thrilling in 
 his ear, " I love you oh, how I love you !" 
 
 She was incarnate once more : body and 
 soul she was his. What he had desired had 
 come to pass. But he could no more avail 
 himself of her self-surrender than dead time 
 can absorb living eternity. He was as a 
 heap of embers whose smoky flicker has 
 been dazzled out of existence by the noon- 
 day sun. She was burning and throbbing 
 in his arms, but his dry lips could scarce re- 
 turn her ambrosial kiss. Because he had 
 coveted her unchastely the heavenly gift of 
 chaste enjoyment was gone. 
 
 But through this impassivity of sense 
 an obligation began to define itself, which 
 brought with it a minor life of its own. 
 Yolande had entered upon the delight of 
 her kingdom : whatever atom of true man- 
 hood remained in him should be devoted 
 to maintaining to the last her faith in its in- 
 tegrity. It was his duty to enact, with what 
 
6i 
 
 animation and illusion he might, the charac- 
 ter of the lover competent to such a love as 
 hers high-minded, reverent, ardent, pure. 
 For this passing hour he must shield her 
 from any shadow or chill of disappointment 
 or misgiving. So much was clear. But how 
 of the time to come ? If to-morrow she de- 
 tected his unreality, what would it profit her 
 to have believed in him to-day ? 
 
 "I must disappear," he said to himself. 
 " She must believe I'm dead. She can stand 
 that better than finding me out. Her faith 
 in immortality will console her with the idea 
 that we shall meet hereafter. And I sup- 
 pose the resources of the Celestial City can 
 provide for her, when she goes there, some 
 fellow such as she fancies I am !" 
 
 And so perhaps with a pang of transcen- 
 dental jealousy of his angelic rival Strath- 
 spey addressed himself to carry out the least 
 unworthy of the several impulses which had 
 moved him since he alighted at Yolande's 
 door. 
 
VIII 
 
 "In Fire sought, I hide in Snow; 
 
 Lost in Delight, am found in Pain ; 
 Present, I fade ; but wise men know 
 O'er Leagues and Years I bloom amain !" 
 
 * 
 
 fUT he soon saw that his scheme of a 
 pretended death would not serve 
 his purpose. 
 
 The world nowadays is not large enough 
 to play hide-and-seek in the light of pub- 
 licity spoils the game. Where could Strath- 
 spey go that Yolande might not find him ? 
 how furnish convincing proof of his decease? 
 A dead body is convincing ! 
 
 Something must be done. For here was 
 Yolande coming to her own the woman 
 new -created entering on the life she was 
 made for the young queen of love ascend- 
 ing her throne and it was all a deception, 
 
63 
 
 her kingdom an hallucination, and the ex- 
 haustless spring of passion in her must waste 
 itself upon a void. This was a tragedy to 
 touch the most indifferent. There was but 
 one way to mitigate it, and that was by dint 
 of another tragedy whose dramatis persona 
 should be himself. In plain terms, in order 
 to keep her faith in his honor, he must kill 
 himself. 
 
 " That sounds rather extravagant, though," 
 he said to himself. 
 
 But the more he looked at the idea the 
 better he was pleased with it. The truth 
 was, he was in the temper for suicide, and 
 therefore prone to accept a pretext. It 
 seemed to him that a man prepared to die 
 for the sake of upholding a girl's ideal was 
 entitled to some respect. His manhood re- 
 asserted itself. He felt able to look her in 
 the face without shrinking. The shadow of 
 death purified and strengthened him. He 
 suddenly felt cheerful, and able to play the 
 light-hearted lover. 
 
64 
 
 They were now pacing up and down the 
 stone pavement of the veranda. Yolande's 
 step was buoyant, and as they walked arm- 
 in-arm, she ever and anon turned and kissed 
 his shoulder. They moved as one, but their 
 thoughts were as disparted as zenith from 
 nadir. 
 
 " I didn't know how to manage so much 
 joy at first," remarked Yolande. " I was 
 caught up to heaven, and couldn't find my 
 way back. I wanted to give you more than 
 can be given on earth at least. Our bodies 
 frightened me; but now I thank God for 
 them. They will teach how to love all the 
 ways and wisdom of it. By trying to make 
 ourselves one flesh here we shall learn how 
 to be one angel afterwards !" 
 
 " Don't you think you'll ever get tired of 
 me, Yolande ?" 
 
 " Tired of you ! If eternity were a mo- 
 ment shorter than it is I should die of thirst 
 and hunger for you, beloved ! Stop !" 
 They paused, and she lifted up her face to 
 
65 
 
 him. " I want you to kiss me a slow kiss. 
 Now I will tell you down into your heart 
 I love you love you forever ! Ah ! did 
 your heart hear it?" 
 
 She drew back her mouth from his, and 
 they looked at each other. 
 
 No ; assuredly the world was not large 
 enough to hold him and her apart from each 
 other ; it must be death. 
 
 They resumed their walk. She tossed her 
 head, and threw a kiss from her finger-tips to 
 the stars. 
 
 " Do you think me beautiful?" 
 
 " All the good and beauty of the world 
 are promises which you have fulfilled." 
 
 She breathed this in, and grew yet love- 
 lier. 
 
 " That proves I belong to you. The more 
 and the longer I am yours the more beau- 
 tiful shall I become. For my beauty is 
 made by your seeing it, and your eyes were 
 made to see it, and no other. Ah, beloved, 
 I pray I may fulfil for you the promises 
 
66 
 
 of the world. But see, how beautiful they 
 are !" 
 
 Indeed, the night was exquisite almost 
 beyond the reach of sense to apprehend it. 
 On the south the sky-line was fringed by the 
 feathered fronds of a row of palms; their 
 surfaces faintly glistened in the moonbeams, 
 and they gave forth in the breeze a delicate 
 hissing sound, like pattering raindrops. The 
 moon was a goddess effulgent, wellnigh too 
 fair for mortal gaze ; she had dissolved both 
 upper and lower clouds, yet but few stars 
 were strong enough to penetrate the mantle 
 of her light ; the largest of them rested just 
 on the peak of one of the northeastern 
 mountains, and might have been mistaken 
 for an earthly fire ; but as our dark planet 
 rolled towards the east the mountain sank 
 and left the bright star ascendant. 
 
 The firmament itself was dark and yet 
 luminous warp and woof of a myriad de- 
 licious hues. Threads of purple and azure 
 were interwoven with gold and crimson, 
 
67 
 
 depth beyond depth, splendor within splen- 
 dor, subdued into a lucid harmony of shadow. 
 But ah, that marvellous crescent ! not white, 
 nor yet golden, but the ineffable counterpart 
 of the dark; her glory was as that of im- 
 mortal eyes, kindled by such passion as im- 
 mortals feel a dissolving brightness, a lustre 
 of celestial wisdom inspired by celestial love. 
 She was not aloof from the beholder, but 
 blended herself with his soul, identifying 
 herself with his emotion, and illuminating 
 his thought. To the inner sense that abyss 
 of frozen and lifeless space that parted her 
 sphere from ours had no reality. She lived 
 within the heart ; she was the language of 
 the night the key that unlocked its mean- 
 ings and uplifted them to harmony. 
 
 There were silent motions and elfin sounds 
 in the air round about. A great white owl 
 feathered its soft flight over the tree-tops, 
 passing fleetly from visibility to invisibility; 
 and the tender, greenish sparkle of countless 
 fireflies throbbed far and near, lanterns of 
 
68 
 
 frolic fairies. Insects and tree-toads chirped 
 and sang unseen, maintaining an interior 
 palpitation of sound that was so multitu- 
 dinous as to seem rhythmical; and ever and 
 anon, distinct above the diapason, yet unit- 
 ing with it, came the croak of a gecko, crawl- 
 ing concealed near by, and answered by an- 
 other at a distance. All the minute life of 
 the earth was vocal and active, but man and 
 the larger animals were still. 
 
 " So the world has been from the begin- 
 ning, and so it will always be," said Yolande. 
 "But my face will become old and wrin- 
 kled, and this body of mine bent and infirm. 
 For we shall live many, many years together 
 on earth shall we not, my beloved ? for we 
 are both of us full of strength and health." 
 
 He drew a long breath. " You ought to 
 outlive me ; you are scarce twenty, and I am 
 thirty-seven." 
 
 Three days was the limit he had given 
 himself to settle his affairs and step out of 
 this life. 
 
69 
 
 " No ; how could I live after you had left 
 me ? God gives us our life every moment ; 
 but when a man and woman have been made 
 one she must receive her life through his. 
 No, I shall go first ; then you will not 
 have the sorrow of dying and leaving me 
 alone." 
 
 Strathspey laughed a little. " Barring ac- 
 cidents, then, let us leave it so." He saw, in 
 his mind, high above the mountain river that 
 flowed between his house and hers, a bridge, 
 narrow, with a low parapet. Just beyond 
 the road made a sudden turn. A horseman, 
 galloping down the declivity, and forgetting 
 what lay on the other side of the turn, would 
 go headlong over into the gulf. 
 
 His hand lay .upon the marble railing. 
 Yolande leaned forward and rested her 
 smooth cheek upon it. They had resumed 
 their bench. 
 
 " I shall be glad of that ugly mask of old 
 age," she said, " put on us just when experi- 
 ence has confirmed our faith that only im- 
 
mortal love and beauty can be real. Instead 
 of hindering, it will help us see each other 
 as we are. And we shall get so used to dis- 
 regarding what only seems, that when our 
 eyes open in Paradise we shall say to each 
 other, ' You have not changed !' ' 
 
 " Suppose I were to go first, Yolande, do 
 you think you would know if my spirit came 
 to you and said, ' It is all right : I am alive, 
 and I love you ?' " 
 
 " How could I help knowing ?" she re- 
 turned, gravely. 
 
 He stooped, and kissed the tender, white 
 region underneath her ear. She sighed with 
 pleasure. 
 
 " How infinite happiness is !" she mur- 
 mured. "How can I hold so much? And 
 yet to-morrow I shall be happier, and hap- 
 pier still the next day, and so on forever. 
 My beloved, there are people who are sick, 
 or starving, or miserable in some way hus- 
 bands and wives who do not love one an- 
 other. You might almost think unhappiness 
 
too was infinite. If we could only comfort 
 them !" 
 
 " We must first become better acquainted 
 with our own happiness," replied Strathspey. 
 
 That rider had plunged thirty feet down 
 to the rocky bed of the torrent. Upon con- 
 sideration, however, he had first dismount- 
 ed. There was no reason for making the 
 innocent animal an accomplice, and Strath- 
 spey was very fond of his horse. It would 
 be thought he had been thrown. 
 
 " Yes, you are right," said Yolande, look- 
 ing up with a smile. " I don't know myself 
 yet my new self." She suddenly added, 
 " You must introduce me to her your wife 
 to Mrs. Strathspey." 
 
 He stared at her, the blood thundering 
 in his heart, his lungs empty of air. She 
 seemed to darken and quiver out of sight : 
 in her place emerged that fair phantom of 
 mocking malice ; ... it withdrew, as volun- 
 tary thought and comprehension returned 
 to him. There sat Yolande, perplexed and a 
 
72 
 
 little troubled, peering through the shadow 
 that was mercifully on his face. 
 
 She put her hand on her bosom. " Some- 
 thing something cold went through me 
 here!" she said. "Did you feel it too?" 
 
 He nodded speak he could not. 
 
 She shivered and then laughed. " We 
 already feel each other's feelings soon, per- 
 haps, we shall think each other's thoughts. 
 Look in my eyes and see !" 
 
 But he bent his face down. After a mo- 
 ment he felt her soft fingers pass caressing- 
 ly through his hair. 
 
 " What is it, beloved ?" she asked. 
 
 The touch and quiet voice restored him. 
 
 " I'm not fit to read your soul nor to 
 have you read mine," he said, speaking 
 huskily from a dry throat. " I wish I could 
 shut a door between to-night and all I've 
 been or done before " 
 
 He checked himself, fearing, to have said 
 too much ; but Yolande, in her proud hu- 
 mility, was above suspicions. 
 
73 
 
 " Yes, you're wiser than I," she said. "A 
 rose doesn't look back to when it was a bud; 
 and God will take care of me to-morrow 
 to-night is enough for us. But to be your 
 wife you must help me realize that ! And 
 you might begin by asking me to marry 
 you, sir. Do you know you haven't done 
 that yet ?" 
 
 He made an attempt to echo her playful 
 tone. 
 
 " I'm not in a ceremonious enough vein 
 to-night. At our next meeting I'll submit 
 the proposition with all the honors." 
 
 The body had been swept down through 
 the wild falls and eddies of the river, and 
 cast up on a little bank of sand below the 
 bridge. A group of persons were looking 
 at it. 
 
 "And then," she went on, "you must let 
 me know your first name, too. You were 
 angry with me a little while ago because I 
 called you ' Mr. Strathspey.' But what else 
 could I ? look at this." 
 
74 
 
 She pulled at a silken cord round her 
 neck and drew from its hiding-place in her 
 bosom a man's visiting-card bearing the 
 legend " Mr. A. H. Strathspey." 
 
 " There, you see " she began ; but her 
 voice faltered and a blush spread over her 
 face and neck. " I never thought I should 
 show you that." 
 
 Tears came to Strathspey's eyes at this 
 revelation. It seemed to bind them together 
 as nothing else had done. She had loved 
 him from the beginning, in the sacredness of 
 her maiden privacy, before knowing whether 
 he loved her. His heart melted within him 
 for tenderness and humility. 
 
 " God bless you, Yolande !" said he. " Will 
 you let me keep this now? It is it will 
 do me more good than you can imag- 
 ine." 
 
 She slipped the silken cord over her head, 
 kissed the card, and then passed the loop 
 round her lover's neck. With her arms on 
 his shoulders and her mouth at his ear she 
 
75 
 
 whispered, " There's only one thing in the 
 world I would exchange for it and that is 
 you ! So now you are my own !" 
 
 " I am your knight ; this is your favor 
 which I wear in my fight with the dragon. 
 If he were Death himself I shouldn't be 
 afraid of him now. If he gets the better of 
 me, bury me with this on my heart." He 
 looked at her with sparkling eyes. 
 
 She shook her head and pressed her arms 
 against her sides with a tremor. 
 
 " Don't jest about death, beloved ; it has 
 its dark side, after all, though till now I nev- 
 er felt it. But every moment and every way 
 of you are so dear to me that I fear any 
 change. You didn't tell me your name ; 
 what does 'A. H. ' stand for?" 
 
 "Angus Angus Hugh; there's no secret 
 about it. But I want you to call me only 
 by the name you gave me to-night ; no one 
 else has ever called me that. Call me only 
 'Beloved.'" 
 
 " Oh, but I can call you both ! And those 
 
76 
 
 are lovely names ; they fit into my heart and 
 mouth. Listen, Ang " 
 
 " Don't don't !" he said, muffling her lips 
 with his. " Any one can call me by those 
 names, and I have heard them from people 
 I hate and that hate me. Don't put your- 
 self with them !" 
 
 Yolande smiled in scorn. 
 
 " As if any one who knew you could hate 
 you ! Besides, I would make you forget all 
 the others and remember only me. Well, 
 since you're so foolish, it shall be as you 
 wish ; but only for to-night ! to-morrow " 
 
 " By-the-way," he interrupted, with an air 
 of recollecting himself, " to -morrow for 
 the next two days, in fact I sha'n't be able 
 to come here. There are some affairs I have 
 to attend to at once. After that I shall be 
 free." 
 
 Yolande's dark eyes dilated, and the cor- 
 ners of her mouth drooped. " To -mor- 
 row two days!" she repeated, in an al- 
 most inaudible voice. "Three days for 
 
77 
 
 you won't come till the third afternoon. 
 Oh, I can't" 
 
 " After that I shall be free," he said again. 
 
 There was a silence. Yolande looked away 
 towards the mountains. 
 
 "This is Tuesday. Wednesday Thurs- 
 day at what time on Friday will you 
 come?" 
 
 Strathspey hesitated. An idea struck 
 him. Could a disembodied soul appear to 
 one in the flesh ? In time past he had half 
 believed so. She had said that she would 
 know if his spirit visited her. They loved 
 each other, and love brings spirits together. 
 
 " On Friday, before sunset," he said at 
 last, " I will be with you." 
 
 It was a weird promise, and a chill trickled 
 through his nerves and about the roots of 
 his hair as he gave it. But he meant to 
 keep the appointment. 
 
 " Now, if you don't come " she began, 
 threateningly. She did not finish her sen- 
 tence. A plan to surprise him had suddenly 
 
78 
 
 occurred to her. She smiled, and nodded 
 mysteriously. 
 
 Meanwhile Strathspey had been continu- 
 ing his speculations. His brows expanded 
 and his heart beat stronger. 
 
 If love brought spirits together if he 
 could consciously approach Yolande after 
 death then why might not their conjunc- 
 tion become permanent? The philosophy 
 of such matters was beyond him, but the 
 inference seemed logical. The veil between 
 the two states of being might often be drawn ; 
 but what of that, if they could be assured of 
 the reality of their intercourse ? And there 
 would be no bar to their union, since his 
 death would have removed it. The concep- 
 tion affected him like the rising of the sun 
 at midnight. 
 
 He cast a glance back over the develop- 
 ment of his relation with Yolande. At first 
 idly attracted by her beauty, he had been 
 gradually won by glimpses of the depth and 
 rarity of her nature, but, knowing the hidden 
 
79 
 
 helplessness of his position, he had put away 
 the thought of love. To-night, caught un- 
 awares by passion, he had arrived at the 
 pass whence only a treacherous crime or the 
 escape of death could rescue him. Each of 
 these had seemed to imply separation from 
 Yolande. But now he saw in the latter a 
 possible tie more intimate than he could 
 otherwise hope to compass. 
 
 Doubtless, in his passion and ignorance, 
 he was counting on a possibility which a far 
 profounder and cooler man might have re- 
 jected. But Providence willingly adapts it- 
 self to human error, and makes it the parent 
 of good. A mistaken hope may set us on an 
 upward path that had else been missed, and 
 each effort supplies strength for the next. 
 
 " I will come, and never after leave you," 
 Strathspey repeated. " I shall be free." 
 
 They stood up and faced each other. It 
 was best to go now while the glow of faith 
 was still vigorous. 
 
 " It would be buying even our farewell 
 
8o 
 
 minutes too dear to wait till we must part 
 before others," said he, with a smile. 
 
 " We cannot part," murmured she, inclin- 
 ing towards him like a wave about to break. 
 " I go with you, beloved I stay with you. 
 If you want to find me, search the marrow 
 of your bones and the core of your heart, 
 for I am there ! Go now, so that I may begin 
 to be with you. Go, or this body of mine 
 will stifle me !" She broke off with a laugh 
 more touching than tears. 
 
 Her vehemence startled him ; it was as if 
 she had guessed his purpose. With a touch 
 of heroism he said, " Only three days more, 
 you know less than three!" 
 
 She took his face between her hands and 
 looked at him. 
 
 " Thought and hope are the part of love 
 which only absence can give," she said, at 
 length. " Now I know how pain can be 
 happiness." She closed her eyes with those 
 words, and when she opened them again her 
 lover was gone. 
 
IX 
 
 " From Death's Beleaguer Life besieged I shield- 
 Inmost from outer guard, Pure from Impure : 
 My sacred Infant fain would Cowards yield 
 To Age profane, stood not my Name secure !" 
 
 >TRATHSPEY mounted his horse 
 and rode down through the gate, 
 and out into the road towards the wood. 
 The level moon-rays shone upon him as he 
 rode. He did not look back. 
 
 Three days more of earth ! He drew a full 
 breath, struck his clinched hand against his 
 chest, twisted his mustaches. He touched 
 his horse with the spur, reining him in at 
 the same moment, and felt him bound be- 
 neath him. He heard the steel-shod hoofs 
 smite the solid road. Only three days more ! 
 Life, life, life ! what is it ? 
 
 Now that the end (or the change) was so 
 
82 
 
 near, he could contemplate the scope and 
 proportions of his career, as might a biog- 
 rapher hereafter. A bright, happy, active 
 beginning; a young manhood blooming with 
 lusty potencies, practical capacities, clean 
 ambitions ; honor from man and favor from 
 woman ; the world all running his way, bear- 
 ing him on and up ; then, to crown good 
 fortune, a brilliant marriage. After that, 
 seven years of bitter, stubborn, degrading 
 antagonism the more bitter because hid- 
 den from the world and finally, surrender 
 of hope, and decorous separation by mut- 
 ual consent. 
 
 That was the story. She had ruined him, 
 by the only means that can ruin such a man ; 
 sapping the sources of his energy, destroy- 
 ing the roots of his self-respect, stabbing the 
 vitals of his aspiration. She knew where to 
 strike. She had fathomed the frailties of the 
 strong man, and practised, with fatal sagac- 
 ity, the art of inflaming his evil and blight- 
 ing his good. But was not he also to blame ? 
 
83 
 
 Twas very likely. Now that the sands were 
 run out, he might judge dispassionately, 
 making all allowances for her, and sparing 
 no truths against himself. 
 
 He rode into the wood ; it was dark, save 
 for the web of tangled fire which the fire- 
 flies wove around him. Upon the canvas 
 of the night he saw her in all her phases 
 from first to last. Her image had been so 
 branded into him that at times of strong 
 emotion it rose into visibility, like the mark 
 on the shoulder of a convict when struck 
 with the hand. She was a fascinating creat- 
 ure, carrying her gifts of intellect, wit, and 
 beauty, and her refinement of wealthy breed- 
 ing, with a grace as light as a child's bearing 
 a handful of wild-flowers. In whatever so- 
 ciety she found herself, she became the spark 
 of vitality, the point of high light. 
 
 Oh, that slender, vivid face ; that airy fig- 
 ure ; those delicate lips of subtle laughter 
 and elfin satire ; those dancing, glancing, 
 measuring, probing eyes ! But within were 
 
the intrepidity of a trooper, the cruelty of a 
 Borgia, the malignity of a Mephistopheles 
 such qualities, at least, he had found in her. 
 Yet he could admit that, united to another 
 than himself, she might have proved gra- 
 cious and lovable. There are spiritual com- 
 binations whose parts, benign in themselves, 
 turn each other to poison by transcendental 
 chemistry. He and she who, apart, might 
 have been fountains of use and honor, had 
 by their union transformed each other into 
 powers of evil, and sowed in society yet one 
 seed more of the old corruption. 
 
 At times when she had been unconscious 
 of observation when, perhaps, she had been 
 recalling girlish visions of what life might 
 have in store for her he had seen her look 
 so wistful and tender that he could have 
 wept and loved her. But did he make overt 
 hints thereto, scepticism and aversion would 
 flicker from her eyes and curve her lips. " I 
 know you to the bottom, and you are despi- 
 cable," said her glance. Possibly she too had 
 
85 
 
 at times tried to approach him, and he, blind 
 to her intent, had repulsed her. The move- 
 ments of their natures were mutually inscru- 
 table. Save in external ways, devoid of life, 
 they could not meet. Stars in their orbits 
 were not more alien than they; but where- 
 as stars respected the decree of boundless 
 space, ordained to admit free development 
 of opposites, he and she had forsaken their 
 divinely appointed paths and swept into dis- 
 astrous collision. 
 
 Nevertheless, during seven years one roof 
 had covered from the world the unceasing 
 duel which was their existence. She sur- 
 passed him in vitality and constancy of ha- 
 tred, and could draw delight from his suffer- 
 ing though her own might be not less; she 
 planned and brooded and sought new ways 
 of attack, cunningly and persistently pro- 
 voking his more passive aversion, until at 
 last it would kindle into flame, and then it 
 was terrible and pathetic to see her joy. 
 
 There was a period when he had thought 
 
86 
 
 that her hate might perhaps be a sort of 
 perverted love. In a sense, a woman who 
 hates and she who loves are akin. Both 
 feed on their passion, seek intimate ways to 
 gratify it, and tempt its object to demon- 
 strate a responsive feeling. Hate might 
 then be construed as love driven by its in- 
 tensity to mask as its own opposite. Was 
 this the key to conduct which had often 
 seemed to Strathspey insane in its malig- 
 nity? Might not love, unable for whatever 
 cause to find its normal expression, prompt 
 to deeds of fantastic malice nay, to mur- 
 der? For murder would bind them to- 
 gether in a sort of infernal marriage ; there- 
 after each fresh act of mutual rancor would 
 weld their souls together more inextricably, 
 till at last they should become, as it were, 
 a single organism of agony, tearing continu- 
 ally at its own heart with a rage inexhaust- 
 ibly renewed by what it thirsted to destroy. 
 But this supposition had not survived 
 analysis. Were the antagonisms of selfhood 
 
87 
 
 as infinite as its attractions, the power of hell 
 would equal that of heaven. But hell, own- 
 ing the self-love of the finite creature as its 
 source, partakes of the creature's finiteness, 
 whereas heaven exists by love, the substance 
 of the Infinite Creator. Hatreds die out 
 in their own evil fire, while the vitality of 
 love cannot but increase to eternity. And 
 though love may at first attract with a force 
 that reacts towards repulsion, yet the innate 
 health and sanity of the divine emotion pres- 
 ently correct this perversity. Only sophis- 
 try can pretend a real confusion between the 
 two. 
 
 But why should the coming together of 
 these two which at worst was hardly more 
 than a venial mistake of judgment involve 
 penalties so severe ? Crime expects punish- 
 ment ; but who would declare their marriage 
 a crime ? They had met, been attracted to 
 each other, and their union had seemed, both 
 from a personal and from a worldly point of 
 view, expedient. Their previous lives had 
 
88 
 
 been blameless. With what justice, then, 
 were they Called on to suffer such torments? 
 the ill effects of which, far from being re- 
 stricted to the immediate pain they wrought, 
 darkened and corrupted the nature of their 
 victims, and set them on the path leading to 
 adultery and murder. 
 
 Such an arraignment of the divine good- 
 ness arises from our confounding the qualities 
 of human with those of natural law. 
 
 Natural law (whether on the material or 
 the spiritual plane) differs from human law 
 in that it regards no persons and inflicts no 
 chastisements. It is simply a beneficent cur- 
 rent conservative of the integrity of the en- 
 tire creation. Opposition, be it witting or 
 unwitting, to this current implies for the 
 opponent pain or annihilation, as the case 
 may be. But the law itself never punishes 
 it can only bless. 
 
 Thus the saint who falls overboard is 
 drowned despite his sanctity, since water 
 misapplied could abdicate its asphyxiating 
 
quality only by violating the economy of 
 the universe. Innocent of animosity against 
 the saint, it yet kills him in deference to in- 
 terests infinitely above those of his continued 
 physical existence. Were water subject to 
 human instead of to divine administration, 
 no doubt it would drown sinners only, and 
 let the elect go free. 
 
 Natural law, in short, being the guise 
 assumed by Divine Love in its function tow- 
 ards organic or unconscious man, is out of 
 relation with his personal or self-conscious 
 phase at least, until the latter shall have 
 fulfilled its office of accomplishing the volun- 
 tary conjunction of creature with Creator. 
 On the other hand, human law deals with 
 the selfhood exclusively, attacking its illu- 
 sions as realities, and treating sin (which is 
 but the characteristic and transient insanity 
 of the selfhood) as if it involved actual dis- 
 cord between the divine and the human 
 nature. Justice and punishment are its 
 shibboleths brave words, but the ideas they 
 
90 
 
 express own no heavenly origin ; earth be- 
 gat them, and in the torrid swamps of hell 
 they riot with tropic luxuriance. No taint 
 of justice defiles Him who said, " Neither do 
 I condemn thee !" nor does that father pun- 
 ish who welcomes his prodigal with kisses 
 and feasting. Punishment lies in spontane- 
 ous recognition of our discord with infinite 
 love, and repentance is seeking again that 
 conjunction with life from which crime would 
 divorce us. 
 
 But though human and natural law differ 
 as do finite and infinite in both quality and 
 function, we are yet often misled by the 
 former's shallow pattern into striving to 
 divert, by personal pleas of guilt and inno- 
 cence, the cosmic sweep of the latter. Strath- 
 spey and his wife broke the natural law 
 which would marry persons and things mut- 
 ually compatible, and no others. Pain, which 
 they interpreted as punishment, was the con- 
 sequence ; and being conscious of individual 
 righteousness in their general relations with 
 
society, they deemed their fate unjust, and 
 that they did well to be angry. Since no 
 man convinced them of sin, why should God 
 do so ? Having rendered unto Caesar the 
 things that were Caesar's, they held their 
 debt to their Father as implicitly liquidated. 
 
 But their trespass transcended the limits 
 of personal aberration ; it was wrong done 
 not to men, but to the nature of man, for 
 which they agents at once of the wrong 
 and partakers of the nature were bound to 
 suffer. Not individual responsibility, but the 
 integrity of creation was in question, which 
 both in generals and in particulars is a mar- 
 riage. Wisdom espouses love, form substance, 
 man woman, all save the last being natural 
 and therefore perfect unions; the last, spir- 
 itual as well as natural, because voluntary, 
 may be profaned, and, instead of rising the 
 radiant consummation of the rest, may sink 
 below the naive couplings of the brute. 
 
 Mismarriages, outcome of artificial culture 
 and ideals, are against nature, which sponta- 
 
92 
 
 neously rejects them. The misery they beget 
 seeks retaliation on its cause and compensa- 
 tion for itself, and murder embodies the first, 
 adultery the second impulse. Circumstance 
 and training may restrain much, but from the 
 moment husband and wife have looked on 
 each other with hatred the worst is possible. 
 And though society so long as these vic- 
 tims of its ceremonial and their own egoism 
 abstain from overt criminality continues 
 complacently to entertain them, yet the in- 
 stant their evil emerges from the darkness 
 of their hearts into the light of vulgar pub- 
 licity is a merciless leopard at their throats. 
 Hence hypocrisy completes the infernal cat- 
 egory. But the penalties of human law can 
 be avoided only by allowing those of natural 
 law the fuller scope. 
 
 All the ingenuity of intellect and wisdom 
 of experience have failed to devise a cure for 
 the predicament in which Strathspey and his 
 wife had placed themselves. Divorce restores 
 nothing that has been lost, and patient for- 
 
93 
 
 bearance seems beyond the strength of those 
 weak enough to fall into the snare. But if 
 earthly resources offered no relief, there, 
 once more, was death, and what might lie 
 beyond. And for Strathspey death was now 
 both relief and hope ! 
 
 Riding out of the dark wood, he saw the 
 mountain lifting itself sublime against the 
 stars. The voice of the river, calling him, 
 promising peace, came distinctly to his ears. 
 As he breasted the ascent he spoke to his 
 horse, which responded with a gallop. High- 
 er they mounted and higher, into cooler air. 
 Only three days more between him and 
 freedom ! 
 
X 
 
 " Worlds, Wisdom, Power, the Sky, are thine by 
 
 right, 
 
 Art thou so rich my suppliant to be. 
 Wouldst buy, base Mendicant, my wealth of me? 
 Hunger I sell thee, Nakedness, and Night !" 
 
 'HE road, doubling in and out around 
 the projecting mountain-spurs, and 
 sometimes returning upon itself at a higher 
 level, gradually trended towards the east, to 
 the point where it crossed the river. On 
 either hand, as he rode, was a steep preci- 
 pice, dropping darkly down on the right, 
 mounting sheer upward on the left, and 
 everywhere clothed with vegetation. The 
 tops of tall trees reached up as if to grasp 
 him from beneath, and the roots of others 
 overhung his head above. The pallid rib- 
 bon of road wound amidst this silent obscu- 
 
95 
 
 rity like a path miraculously hung in space. 
 No breeze penetrated this mighty ravine ; 
 each leaf and frond stood motionless as if 
 enchanted. But the vitality and profusion 
 of plant life were greater here than on the 
 lower levels ; for the sharp summits of the 
 mountain caught the drifting clouds, and 
 compelled them to linger and dissolve in 
 constant showers, whence were begotten 
 thronging ferns and thick cushions and tap- 
 estries of moss. The leaves of the trees 
 spread larger, and the slender pillared boles 
 rose aloft as if in thronging competition for 
 the sky. Such fury of life, such immobili- 
 ty ! Insects were fewer ; the firefly showers 
 of the plain were reduced to here and there 
 a wandering atom of light ; the chorus of 
 tree-frogs had dwindled to intermittent voices 
 of solitude. Only the rushing undertone of 
 the river abode unceasingly in the ear, rising 
 and falling as the road passed behind moun- 
 tain parapets or surmounted them. 
 
 At length, half-way up the ravine, the 
 
96 
 
 rider bore to the right and reached the nar- 
 row bridge. He halted on its arch, and 
 looked below. 
 
 Even since he had passed, that afternoon, 
 the stream had swollen. A tumult of wa- 
 ters hurtled downward, twisted and whirled 
 into fantastic forms, which from moment to 
 moment kept their contours unaltered a 
 constant force casting in identical moulds 
 the ever-shifting substance, as soul moulds 
 body. Headlong motion thus assumed the 
 semblance of immobility, and the roar of the 
 cataract seemed disconnected with it the 
 strain of a titanic harp smitten by the invis- 
 ible spirit of the mountain. After Strath- 
 spey had gazed awhile, the vibration of this 
 mighty music communicated its contagion 
 to his brain, and he felt drawn as by a 
 myriad viewless but potent threads of be- 
 guilement to merge himself in the wild dia- 
 pason. But he sat still his hour was not 
 yet come ! 
 
 His three days were none too many for 
 
97 
 
 winding up his account with the world. In 
 order to vanish with a plausible appearance 
 of unpremeditation, many things must be 
 premeditated. He must plan out for him- 
 self an imaginary future, and prepare data 
 to convince whom it might concern that he 
 had been anticipating an existence full of 
 activities. And he must provide against the 
 possibility that any associate of his former 
 career she above all from whose fatal shad- 
 ow he was escaping should be induced to 
 reveal the facts that it behooved him to 
 hide. Until their union hereafter Yolande 
 must deem his honor spotless. 
 
 " And what then ?" he asked himself. " In 
 the end a time will come when all hearts are 
 open and no secrets hid. She will know me 
 as I am at last. Then why not as well now 
 as later? Am I hiding the truth for her 
 sake, or for my own ? Am I not a coward 
 both towards Yolande and towards my wife 
 an out-and-out coward? Hum! I must 
 look into this." 
 
98 
 
 In the preoccupation of his bent to sui- 
 cide, its justification had not concerned him. 
 It now became insistent, as if some one 
 stood beside him and demanded an answer. 
 
 A coward deserting his colors under fire ! 
 The very eagerness with which he had ac- 
 cepted this facile means of shirking trouble 
 should have warned him to doubt its hon- 
 esty. It had taken a lifetime of error and 
 selfishness to bring him to his present pass 
 what miraculous virtue lay in a plunge off 
 a bridge to make wholesome and straighten 
 his diseased and crooked soul? And since 
 the soul gives the environment, this also so 
 far as its spiritual bearing on him went must 
 remain unmodified-by any act of mere physical 
 violence. Nay, the unmufHing of the senses 
 wrought by death would but make them 
 more sensitive to the ills he sought to fly. 
 He was not a coward, merely, but a fool ! 
 
 "After killing myself I shall be as ill off as 
 before, and probably worse," was his con- 
 clusion. 
 
99 
 
 Then how could he expect to draw nearer 
 Yolande by that act? Between pure and 
 corrupt, selfish and unselfish, is a great gulf 
 fixed, which might be bridged on the material 
 plane, but not on the other. No ; the only 
 way to deserve Yolande was to cleanse him- 
 self from defilement a process more labo- 
 rious than drowning, and of a different char- 
 acter. 
 
 How should he be cleansed ? Strathspey 
 looked this way and that, but knew before- 
 hand that there was for him but one course. 
 He had desired death he should have it ; 
 but death not of the body, but of mortal 
 pride and egoism, involved in taking up again 
 the burden he had laid down. He must take 
 it up and so bear it that it at last be trans- 
 figured into the very robe and crown of sal- 
 vation. Ah, that would be to die indeed ! 
 He groaned at the thought of it, and sweat 
 started on his forehead. 
 
 "Can I do it?" he asked himself. " Go 
 back to my wife and turn the curse of our 
 
100 
 
 life into a blessing ? God ! is there no other 
 way?" 
 
 The temple we overthrew, and not another, 
 must we rebuild. Marriage had been by him 
 dishonored, and must by him be restored to 
 honor. By what right otherwise might he 
 claim its sanctification ? Though between 
 him and his wife no true conjugal union was 
 or had ever been possible, yet might they 
 too vindicate the holiness of its name. Their 
 very disinclination to each other might render 
 more pure and potent their loyalty to the 
 marriage principle. No disguises ! It must 
 be understood that they came together in 
 the teeth of personal impulse, to do im- 
 personal right their compensation, the au- 
 stere satisfaction of atoning for wrong done 
 to the human nature within them. Incom- 
 patible as individuals, as man and woman 
 they could meet with respect and charity. 
 They could educate each other to disregard 
 surface discords of self for the sake of the 
 vital harmonies within, and thus become fit 
 
101 
 
 for union beyond the grave with their true 
 mates in the holy estate which they had for- 
 feited here. 
 
 True, she might decline to co-operate in 
 this enterprise. Easy to imagine the sarcas- 
 tic scepticism with which she might greet 
 the proposal. " You ask me to act as your 
 moral disinfectant, to perfume you into the 
 graces of another woman. You must excuse 
 me ! If she is too fastidious to take you as 
 you are, she is perhaps better without you." 
 But though at first she might hold that tone, 
 Strathspey did not believe it would survive 
 her recognition of his honesty. She was too 
 intelligent to deny the truth of his argument, 
 and, finding him practically faithful to it, 
 would emulate his loyalty. In any event, 
 his course must be the same. He owed her 
 more reparation than she owed him ; his in- 
 itiative had brought them together, and their 
 separation had left her at the mercy of slan- 
 derous tongues, and to the temptation to 
 take what solace lay in justifying their malice. 
 
102 
 
 But by returning to the protection of her 
 honor he would restore its value in her own 
 eyes ; and his self-effacement for ideal mar- 
 riage' sake would, he hoped, reanimate her 
 belief in it which their personal failure had 
 slain. At any rate, he would do his best to 
 rehabilitate her without and within. 
 
 So far, good ; but what of Yolande ? 
 
 His pretext for suicide had been to keep 
 untouched her faith in him and her igno- 
 rance of worldly evil. The pretext but was 
 it the motive? Had he been unhampered, 
 and another man with such a past as his had 
 attempted to win Yolande from him, would 
 he in that case have hesitated to disenchant 
 her by the revelation of his rival's iniquities? 
 Not he ! he would have praised himself for 
 warning her what a goodly outside falsehood 
 hath. Plainly, then, he was seeking less to 
 keep her from evil knowledge than to white- 
 wash himself. But his duty to her was to be 
 honest to show her his seamy side, since he 
 had one. It was not for him but for Prov- 
 
IQ3 
 
 idence to mould truth to ends of benefi- 
 cence. If it grieved or even alienated her, bet- 
 ter that than to deceive her. She was like 
 other human beings, born into the world to 
 be shaped by knowledge and strengthened 
 by sorrow not to slip through it in a vain 
 dream of its innocence. Knowledge of evil 
 is to the good the awakening of charity. 
 Heaven's light could not inform angels were 
 there no dark of hell from which to win re- 
 demption. 
 
 Strathspey looked down once more into 
 the foaming rapids and shook his head with 
 a short laugh. 
 
 " It's not so easy as I thought," said he. 
 " But have I got it in me to see this thing 
 through? Perhaps since I've been able to 
 see straight, I shall get strength to do right. 
 Well don't grow cold on it ! See her to- 
 morrow and tell her the facts day after to- 
 morrow there's a steamer !" 
 
 He shook his rein and passed on up the 
 mountain. 
 
XI 
 
 "When from Me thou strayest, 
 All Heaven thou betray est. 
 So thou return to Me, 
 All Heaven shall wait on thee !" 
 
 IE A R A N G U S, If you get this letter 
 (there is just a doubt if I send it) you will 
 know it is my last as well as my first, and 
 requires no answer. It is a year since I saw you ; I 
 hated the sight of you then, and should still were 
 you to return ; but, as it is, I have no hard feeling 
 towards you, and dare say that but for our marriage 
 we might have been good friends. You are not a 
 bad man, though I brought the bad out of you, and 
 hated your good qualities because they were yours. 
 Had you justified my hate by being an unmixed 
 devil, I should have hated you less ; but as I felt 
 that hating you involved hating your good as well 
 as your bad, and as that was injustice (which I hate), 
 of course I hated you all the more. 
 
 " I could almost imagine a time or state in which 
 
we could laugh at the absurdity of our marriage. 
 And yet a false marriage is throwing what is holy 
 to the dogs, which can never be laughable. Only 
 perfect love should possess what husband and wife 
 surrender to each other, and when there is no love 
 it is like dogs slavering over the communion-table. 
 It is about the only unmitigated tragedy 1 can 
 think of ; for if the source of the stream be muddy, 
 how can anything pure ever come from it? Be- 
 side this misfortune our trumpery personal quar- 
 rel seems nothing. As fellow -sufferers we should 
 rather feel mutual sympathy and compassion. Any 
 injury we could do each other would be a trifle 
 compared with the injury already done us by our 
 marriage a ridiculous anticlimax. One's sense 
 of humor must be low to admit of it. To curse 
 God and die (whatever that fine thing may be) 
 seems more dignified. 
 
 "The fact is, reason, which we so extol, never 
 fails to betray us at the pinch. Nothing is more 
 irrational than personal antagonisms. I might have 
 loved in another man the same things I hated in 
 you. What could be more silly ? As if the same 
 wine poured into glasses of two different shapes 
 should in one be poison, in the other life ! We call 
 it silly because it is a mystery beyond our compre- 
 
io6 
 
 hension. There seems to be something more po- 
 tent (at least to our finite minds) in form than in 
 substance perhaps because form itself is limita- 
 tion and substance infinity. Could you and I be 
 dissolved and the same material made up in other 
 forms, we might love each other. But forms can 
 never change, though their contents one hopes 
 may be purified. You and I could never, even were 
 we angels of the third heaven, endure each other's 
 presence. Luckily the universe has antipodes for 
 the accommodation of cases such as ours. Sirius 
 and Arcturus are both respectable stars, but never- 
 theless, I believe, are very remote one from the 
 other. 
 
 " I never told you, nor did you suspect it but my 
 one supreme desire in this world was for a child. A 
 baby at my breast would have broken down the 
 hardness with which I protected myself against 
 you, and something precious in my heart would 
 have gushed out with my mother's milk. But now 
 I thank God no baby came, for evil and good would 
 have been so mingled in it that nothing could have 
 saved us. And since we were deprived of that 
 curse in guise of blessing, some real blessing may 
 await us hereafter. But I don't know exactly what 
 I mean by this. I can imagine no blessing fit to 
 
name beside a dear little baby my own precious 
 baby clinging to me and knowing nothing better 
 than to love me. And that is an experience I can 
 never have. 
 
 " I feel really sorry for you, and hope you can feel 
 sorry for me. We wanted with all our hearts to be 
 happy, and yet could not help being each other's 
 misery. Love, I am convinced, is not a physical 
 thing, but a spirit, without which the most beautiful 
 physical conditions are an ugly corpse. To miss 
 true love altogether may be death, but to try for it 
 and miss it, as we did, is murder. You did me the 
 irreparable harm of asking me to marry you, and I 
 returned it by accepting you. We had fallen into 
 the habit of patterning our conduct on what society 
 did, and this seemed but the natural culmination of 
 a thousand other dashing and shallow things ; in- 
 deed, it was just that the final step of a smoothly 
 graduated series. But it was fatal as well as final : 
 the devil leading us along in his fascinating way 
 from one point to another, and at last, with his 
 most insinuating grimace of all, pushing us over the 
 precipice. 
 
 " Why should I say I forgive you, or that I ask 
 you to forgive me ? What is forgiveness ? Seems 
 to me all evil and all good are done through rather 
 
io8 
 
 than by us ; we but consent to be the medium. The 
 account of mischief is even between us. We let 
 ourselves be duped by that old charlatan of Gene- 
 sis into accepting the flashy frescoes on the outer 
 walls of the House of Life for the life itself within. 
 He ogled you through my eyes and wheedled me 
 through your voice. The masquerade was success- 
 ful for the moment, threadbare though it seems 
 now. 
 
 " I have had some idle time on my hands of 
 late which I have occupied with meditations on 
 your future. You have the masculine advantage of 
 being able to weather such a storm as ours ; and 
 being in the prime of life, it would be against nature 
 not to wish for a comfortable wife and a season of 
 domestic felicity. It has been no hardship to me 
 that our separation did not permit another mar- 
 riage. I am deficient in the insatiable enterprise 
 that animates some ladies in my position. But 
 women's society of some kind is indispensable to 
 most men. Now, I chose to believe whether from 
 vanity or from confidence in your self-respect that 
 so long as we lived under the same roof you al- 
 lowed yourself no vulgar consolation. And though 
 it may be assuming quite exceptional virtue on your 
 part, I please myself with the thought that you 
 
JQ9 
 
 have not done so even yet. I am jealous : not as a 
 loving woman is jealous lest a rival win her man 
 from her, nor as a dog in the manger, keeping from 
 others what I need not myself. But I am jealous 
 to be free from the reproach of having driven you 
 to low actions, and to have you escape the degra- 
 dation of doing them. For all its selfishness, this 
 jealousy is the nearest approach to a wifely feeling 
 (seems to me) I have ever had towards you. I 
 want you to succeed despite our failure. And yet 
 I confess that while we were together I did my ut- 
 most to defeat my desire by tormenting you past 
 endurance. But a woman needs to feel she has 
 some power over her husband, if only to make him 
 hate her ! 
 
 " But our separation put an end to this amuse- 
 ment, and I cooled down to a consideration of what 
 was to happen to you. Had I had the enthusiastic 
 temperament of a woman I read of in a French 
 novel, I might have promoted your marriage by dis- 
 interestedly furnishing you with legal grounds of 
 divorce. But my sense of humor would not allow 
 of that. Barring that, there remained suicide ; but, 
 however little enamoured I may be of life, I have a 
 distaste (as you know) for the sensational, and could 
 not, besides, face the humiliation of leaving you to 
 
no 
 
 imagine that I died in despair at your abandon- 
 ment. Moreover, I should have laughed in my 
 own face in the looking-glass as I stood up in front 
 of it to swallow my poison. In short, with every 
 desire to help you out if I decently could, my in- 
 genuity proved unequal to devise a means. 
 
 " But at this point circumstance intervened and 
 enables me to close this long letter with a dramatic 
 little surprise. The letter, by-the-way, has been 
 even more tedious to write than to read. I have 
 been a week at it, lying on my back, in such brief 
 stints as my condition allowed. Have you been 
 wondering what ailed my handwriting ? My horse 
 bolted in the park, and in spite of the heroism of 
 two mounted policemen and my own groom, col- 
 lided with poor old Mrs. Walsingham's victoria in 
 the drive. My back was hurt (she escaped with 
 a fright), and Dr. Jersey you remember the pom- 
 pous old goose coquetting with his reflection in the 
 mirror while he made up his prescriptions now 
 sets me an outside limit of ten days. But I know 
 myself, and what I want, and I don't think I shall 
 keep them waiting more than five. 
 
 " This will be sent you immediately afterwards. 
 I cordially congratulate myself, Angus, and you. 
 I go to freedom, and I leave you free. It has been 
 
Ill 
 
 neatly done, and, on the whole, promptly for re- 
 member, some women in my place would have lin- 
 gered spitefully on to ninety. I am happy, and it 
 will be your own fault, now, if you are not. I send 
 you my best wishes, and beg you, as a last favor, 
 always to be polite to Mrs. Walsingham for my 
 sake. VIVIEN STRATHSPEY. 
 
 " P.S. I couldn't help putting that last in, just 
 for fun. I feel no bitterness, my dear boy, and I 
 hope there will be none in your thoughts of me. 
 
 "V. S." 
 
 Strathspey found this letter awaiting him 
 when he reached his house that night. He 
 read it, standing in his riding-dress at his 
 dressing-table, by the light of a candle ; then 
 he sat down and reread it, with many a 
 pause between the lines. As he finished it 
 for the second time, and the hand which 
 held the painfully pencil-written sheets sank 
 upon his knee, a little shower of rose petals 
 fluttered down and rested upon the signa- 
 ture of the dead woman, and upon the post- 
 script. They were petals of the rose which 
 
112 
 
 Yolande had given him in the garden, telling 
 him he would recognize it in heaven. It 
 was as if the living had sent a message of 
 sisterly tenderness to the dead. 
 
 Yolande and Vivien : the maid and the 
 wife : the living and the dead : the beloved 
 and the unloved ! Yet were they sisters, 
 one in sex, forms of one nature, gifted alike 
 with beauty and mind and power. Why 
 should a man love one and not the other, 
 begetting misery and death where might be 
 life and joy? In truth, as Vivien had said, 
 this is a mystery of mysteries. Identical 
 substance in differing shapes kindles here 
 supreme desire, invincible repulsion there. 
 Are human likes and dislikes but the mask 
 of Divine Order, weaving the rainbow pat- 
 tern of its web, tuning the flawless conso- 
 nances of its symphony? Operating, like 
 all creative power, through poles of kin and 
 alien, innate and spontaneous in its subjects, 
 and therefore unerring, order distributes 
 like to like, and averts the disease of con- 
 
"3 
 
 fusion. Only for Him to Whom naught save 
 nothingness is alien are our finite differences 
 indifferent ; for He is the inmost of all and 
 each, and in Him (albeit beyond our con- 
 sciousness) abides our atonement. 
 
 " She was proud and generous," said 
 Strathspey to himself, thinking thoughts 
 too sad for the relief of tears. "She veils 
 her death itself with raillery, so that I 
 might not see my part in it. I left her to 
 face the ruin of her life alone, and now she 
 dies with a smile and a jest, so that I may 
 the more easily be happy on her grave. For 
 all her dauntless show of gayety and inde- 
 pendence, her heart was broken. No one 
 could heal it I least of all, who wronged 
 her most. No, nor the baby she longed for, 
 since it would have been mine as well as hers. 
 Yet she bore me no grudge ; she desired a 
 means to set me free, without even a leg- 
 acy of remorse. Many a wife who talked 
 more of love than Vivien of hate would 
 have proved less unselfish in the end. Hers 
 
114 
 
 is pure human kindness, found only in great 
 souls. She humiliates me : even had we 
 loved each other, she deserved a better man 
 than I. And she asks me to think of her 
 without bitterness ! I wish she might have 
 known what I had in mind to do. God has 
 done best, no doubt ; but had I been wor- 
 thy, He would have let me be the means. 
 What am I fit for, then ?" 
 
 The most unflattering truth we are called 
 on to acknowledge in this world is, that 
 heaven, though it may be lost, cannot be 
 earned. 
 
XII 
 
 Fires freeze without my Spark, 
 Where I shine not Suns are dark ; 
 Wanting me, Life is but Death, 
 Heaven Hell but for my Breath." 
 
 JTRATHSPEY folded up the rose 
 petals in the letter, and put both to- 
 gether in the envelope. He had no inclina- 
 tion to sleep ; so having changed his dress, 
 he went out on the veranda, which com- 
 manded an outlook of many miles over 
 mountain, plain, and sea. A breeze came 
 whispering up from the east, and the air was 
 cool. It was near midnight. 
 
 But Strathspey was ill at ease. For the 
 second time since his parting with Yolande 
 were the foundations of the deep within him 
 broken up. He was thrown abroad in space, 
 without aim or orbit. To one used to sub- 
 
sist on purposes, to pride himself on know- 
 ing his will and doing it, this uncertainty 
 was more trying than the execution of any 
 resolve, be it ever so arduous. 
 
 While he paced to and fro on the moun- 
 tain-top, his spirit tumbled far down in val- 
 leys of doubt and shame. The formless 
 darkness 1 of the night corresponded with the 
 hollow gloom in his mind. The noise of 
 his foot-fall on the planks jarred upon his 
 nerves, and he halted and gazed out towards 
 the sea, though his eyes admonished him of 
 no outward objects. Silence and darkness ! 
 Over him, as he stood, crept the sense of 
 solitude, isolation, rejection. He was alone 
 in the world and in the night, but still more 
 was he alone in the spirit. The departure 
 of Vivien seemed to separate him from all 
 the living world ; even the image of Yolande 
 receded and faded like a dream ; and God 
 Himself, as if holding him unworthy of so 
 much as chastisement, removed the last bar- 
 rier to his desire, and turned away. In this 
 
welter of despondence, familiar ideas be- 
 came phantasmal ; and almost the only 
 thing remaining real was the fact of Vivien's 
 death. 
 
 True, he had accounted her, living, the 
 thorn in his side, the cloud before his 
 sun, the clog on his aspiration ; yet did 
 her death leave him as a body deprived of 
 weight, hanging impotent in the void. Even 
 as his enemy (which she no longer was) 
 she had been, in a sense, his only friend. 
 For our apparent misfortune is often our 
 surest link with our fellows ; through dis- 
 cipline of darkness we learn to know and 
 value light ; and the fable of him who sold 
 his shadow to the evil one betokens those 
 who, seeking to shirk the common mortal 
 heritage of ill, forfeit along with it their 
 capacity for happiness. 
 
 Strathspey told himself that equity was 
 not met in his case. Apparently nothing 
 now withheld him from Yolande ; but the 
 appearance was a mockery. Debarred from 
 
atoning for his misdeeds, he was left incom- 
 petent to the freedom born of absolution. 
 To qualify him for union with Yolande, he 
 had relied upon a lifetime of self-abnega- 
 tion with Vivien ; but the latter being now 
 impossible, with what face could he pre- 
 tend to the former ? Has not God forsaken 
 him from whom He takes opportunity for 
 amends? Nor is there comfort in the sug- 
 gestion that, knowing his frailty, God wills 
 to spare him the foredestined failure of an 
 effort to atone. For above all things else a 
 man prizes his liberty, since thereon depends 
 his very being as a man ; and will rather cling 
 to it in the depths of hell than stand bereft 
 of it beside the throne of the Almighty. 
 Let him fail of virtue, if he must ; let him 
 sell heaven for a mess of pottage, if he will ; 
 but let not the Lord himself presume to 
 tamper with his sacred freedom. And the 
 man who believes himself to have been thus 
 juggled with stands in peril of worse than 
 death and the judgment. 
 
A fierce resentment began to smoulder in 
 Strathspey's heart. But he crushed it down> 
 and tried to think again. 
 
 " What shall I do ? Can I marry Yolande, 
 revealing nothing? No: in the house of 
 true marriage must be no locked chambers. 
 Marriage must be free intercourse of her soul 
 with mine not a paltry game of hide-and- 
 seek, leading us each year further apart. If 
 I keep my true self from her, her true self 
 will be lost to me ; my seven years taught me 
 that, if nothing else. With Yolande and me, 
 it must be all or nothing." 
 
 He stared intently into the darkness. Its 
 very blankness made it plastic to the con- 
 ceptions of fantasy, and his mind was un- 
 naturally active. Something seemed to lurk 
 yonder ; no, only a throbbing in his own 
 eyeballs, which seemed to seemed to figure 
 forth something pshaw ! He pressed his 
 fingers over his eyes, and forcibly repressed 
 the irregularity of his breathing. What had 
 he been saying? 
 
120 
 
 "Go to Yolande that was the idea go 
 to her and say, ' I have ruined one woman's 
 life ; reward me with yours !' She would do 
 it ; in her heavenly charity, she would accept 
 me. But how could I accept myself? My 
 sins are upon me; -no purgatorial fires have 
 burnt me clean ; I can show no guarantee of 
 good behavior. For aught I know or can 
 prove to the contrary, there may be an adul- 
 terer or a murderer here" he struck his 
 clinched fist over his heart " waiting to 
 practise on Yolande ! No I'll save her from 
 that, if I have to take myself by the throat 
 to do it ! If I could have purged myself 
 a lifetime of sacrifice with Vivien but 
 Providence, in its infinite wisdom, wouldn't 
 have that ! I'm no good ; a lost soul, fit 
 only to be taken by the throat and " 
 
 He checked himself, noticing that he was 
 speaking aloud, in a strange, excited voice. 
 A nervous shudder went through him ; then 
 another. He laid his hands upon the wood- 
 en rail of the veranda, bracing himself upon 
 
121 
 
 it with all his force. It cracked ; it broke, 
 and a fragment of it came away. He flung 
 it from him into the shrubbery, and wiped 
 the sweat from his forehead. 
 
 "Come mustn't get off your base, you 
 know !" He laughed a moment between his 
 set teeth. " A bit played out, my boy ; but 
 you're all right. Steady as we used to say 
 in the crew steady !" 
 
 Suddenly he lifted his face and peered, 
 ghastly pale, into the blankness of darkness 
 beyond the veranda. 
 
 " Now, what the devil," muttered he, in 
 the carefully restrained tone of a philosopher 
 momentarily perplexed, " is that?" 
 
 Darkness and silence. 
 
 "Twenty -five years since that has hap- 
 pened to me," he went on, scarce audibly, and 
 still maintaining his close gaze. " Used to 
 see 'em after being ill ; nervous organiza- 
 tion, father said. It's nothing ; only curious. 
 What are you shuddering for, you fool ?" 
 
 There was another pause. 
 
122 
 
 " Old Maverick explained 'em to us in class 
 at college. Images of external objects pass- 
 ing by the optic nerve to the brain are inter- 
 preted . . . That's the normal. But images 
 may originate in the brain, which the optic 
 nerve, unable to discriminate, reports back as 
 also realities. There you have apparitions 
 subjective hallucinations. That's clear 
 enough, I should think. I'll reason you 
 down, damn you!" 
 
 The next instant he stiffened, his right 
 arm stretched out tense as a harp - string, 
 fingers extended. " Hold on ! just as you 
 were, please ! You can't move, you know, 
 because " 
 
 Gradually the tension relaxed, the arm 
 fell, and the retained breath exhaled from 
 the lungs. He nodded his head, and chuckled 
 faintly. 
 
 " I knew I could reason it down. It's all 
 right only it had no business to move, be- 
 cause . . . What was it Maverick said ? No 
 matter ; bed and sleep are what I need. To- 
 
123 
 
 morrow . . . Oh, you're there, are you ? 
 you scoundrel !" 
 
 He wheeled about and faced down the 
 veranda. It is horrible that such things are 
 permitted. Science and philosophy will lie, 
 and lie, and all the while the thing itself 
 creeps up behind you and frights the man- 
 hood out of you. Horrible ! 
 
 And yet there was nothing ostensibly un- 
 pleasant in the figure confronting Strath- 
 spey. There were indeed some singular 
 points about it. Feature by feature and 
 limb by limb, it had a marvellously familiar 
 aspect ; and despite the dense obscurity in 
 which it stood, it was visible in every detail. 
 But here one remarks another peculiarity 
 that there were moments when it seemed 
 less distinct than at others. And these va- 
 riations were apparently dependent upon the 
 mental ebb and flow in the observer. 
 
 After all, however, since as we know every 
 man has two selves, what more natural than 
 that in seasons of special perspicacity they 
 
124 
 
 should become objectively cognizant of each 
 other? 
 
 "At all events, my dear fellow, here we 
 are. No friend like a man's self to pull him 
 out of a hole and we are in a pretty deep 
 one ! But there's a way out a clean, gen- 
 tlemanly way never fear !" 
 
 "That's my own voice I'm saying all 
 this !" Strathspey broke in. " Steady !" 
 
 He had a feeling that, by an effort, he 
 might overcome and banish the figure ; but 
 how to put forth the effort he knew not. 
 On the other hand, would not the figure in- 
 sensibly gain dominion over him? "It's I 
 am the real one, you know !" 
 
 Who said that ? 
 
 "Reason, my boy reason. We have 
 been making a bit of a fool of ourselves to- 
 day ; but we shall square accounts yet. We 
 are going to assert our manhood, freedom, 
 independence ; to accept slights and insults 
 from no one not even from Providence 
 eh? That was all very pretty about immortal 
 
125 
 
 love, and heaven, and atonement, and the 
 rest of it ; but to a man of the world in his 
 sober senses eh? Now, Vivien had the 
 right stuff in her; we can talk about acci- 
 dents, but we know well enough that she 
 had the proper pride to arrange what should 
 happen when the game was up. As for 
 Yolande " 
 
 " You lie !" said Strathspey ; but the effort 
 left him flaccid, and the other flowed on. 
 
 " Plain, straight-out reason, my boy: see 
 things as they are, say what we know ; no 
 more sentiment and humbug it's gone too 
 far for that ! She was a delicious creature, 
 Yolande; innocent, if you like physically 
 innocent; but what does that amount to? 
 We made a fool of ourselves there ; she was 
 the same at bottom as all the rest of them, 
 and she would have preferred to have us 
 show up a little more . . . virile eh?" 
 
 There was a guttural noise, such as comes 
 from a creature half-conscious under the dis- 
 secting knife, but no words. A change had 
 
126 
 
 taken place : that which had seemed the 
 phantom was now the reality, and flesh and 
 blood had become the apparition. The in- 
 itiative was with the former. 
 
 "What have I to do with this Pietistic 
 scarecrow, made up of moral and social con- 
 ventions ? I am the true life ! Liberty for- 
 ever ! Wickedness is a word to scare mon- 
 keys with, not men ! There is no other 
 God but me ! Come, you sanctimonious 
 hound, I'll make an end of you ! Follow my 
 leader the old school game ! Do you know 
 your catechism ? ' What is good ?' Whatever 
 I like. * What is truth ?' Whatever I say. 
 'What is purity?' Purity!" There was a 
 low, sagacious chuckle. "Purity, my dear, 
 is grace before meat !" 
 
 Down the veranda, through the door, 
 along the hall, into the bedchamber. Dark 
 as pitch ; but we know that the mahogany 
 bureau stands between the windows at the 
 end of the room ; the candle is on it ; and the 
 other thing is in the upper right-hand drawer. 
 
127 
 
 He shut the door softly behind him, and 
 for a moment stood alert just within the 
 threshold, scenting (as it were) this way 
 and that through the darkness. Satisfied 
 that the coast was clear, he moved forward, 
 and his bearing underwent an odd change. 
 The hitherto erect and well -carried figure 
 seemed to throw aside its human conscious- 
 ness as an irksome burden ; it became loose- 
 jointed and ignoble ; the body stooped for- 
 ward from the loins, the arms dangled in 
 front, the knees were bent, and the head 
 lurched grotesquely on the neck. He began 
 to forge swiftly hither and thither, with an 
 irregular, ape-like gait, and with no other ap- 
 parent aim than the indulgence of a vague 
 animal impulse. A meaningless grimace 
 was set upon his features, and from his 
 mouth came ever and anon a clucking noise, 
 like that made by liquid escaping from a 
 jug. Mask and domino are poor disguise 
 compared with that wrought upon the body 
 by the distortion of a human spirit. 
 
128 
 
 The room, as in all one-storied West Ind- 
 ian houses, was ceilingless, and the naked 
 boards and rafters of the roof rose in a peak 
 to the ridge-pole. The windows were un- 
 glazed openings, protected by green jalou- 
 sies with widely spaced slats. All at once a 
 strong gust of wind came through the shut- 
 ters like a sigh, and was followed by the 
 dash of heavy raindrops on the dry shingles. 
 At the same moment a large bat, whether 
 in pursuit of an insect or carried on the cur- 
 rent of air, darted unseen through the gap- 
 ing slats, and wheeled its noiseless, nervous 
 flight round and round in dizzying circles. 
 
 The other occupant of the room halted 
 abruptly in his lope, and crouched, listening, 
 with upturned ear. 
 
 His mind, at this juncture, was like a 
 dwelling shaken down by earthquake, in 
 which various records of human life are 
 pitched together in weird inconsequence. 
 The noisome growths and reptiles of the 
 cellar are mingled with toys of the nursery 
 
129 
 
 and ornaments of the drawing-room; a 
 snake crawls out of the damask sheets of 
 the baby's cradle, and a toad hops among 
 the books and engravings of the library ; the 
 stench of the cesspool unites itself with the 
 scattered perfumes of the boudoir. The 
 owner meanwhile stumbles, helpless and 
 bewildered, amidst the ruins, lantern in 
 hand, the hovering light from which falls 
 now here, now there, and whatever it re- 
 veals seems for the moment to characterize 
 the whole. So, in this man, was the order of 
 memory displaced, and the relation of states 
 confused ; and processes of thought had 
 fallen to be mere impressions stimulated 
 by the flicker of chance suggestion. The 
 results were fantastic. 
 
 The moan of the wind-gust brought be- 
 fore him the death agony of a man he had 
 once known ; but the staccato impact of 
 the raindrops became the multitudinous 
 pattering of innumerable fairy feet scam- 
 pering panic-stricken over the hollow gable. 
 
1 3Q 
 
 The sound of the elfin stampede died away, 
 a squad of belated fugitives hopping hur- 
 riedly in the rear. Then all was still again. 
 
 " Fairies ! No wonder they run ; this is 
 no place for them. Dead men are kept 
 here. They said the fairies were dead, too ; 
 my mother told me that. Poor Frank ! 
 what a cropper he came from the fourth- 
 story window ! Vivien is dead, too. I 
 killed her, though she lied about it. But 
 Yolande killed me, but she won't know it 
 till to-morrow. Are you there ?" 
 
 The soft wing of the bat, eddying invisible 
 about him, had swept his forehead. 
 
 " Are you there, mother dear? Don't go, 
 please, mother ; horrible things come to me 
 in the dark. I shall light the candle then. 
 A gentleman can't cut his throat in the 
 dark. Did you hear that ? There is a man 
 here wants to kill himself. The fairies ran 
 away. It's in the upper right-hand drawer ; 
 low down on the left is the place, an inch 
 above the collar-bone. But we must have a 
 
light ; no bungling, you know ! Listen it's 
 no dream, I tell you ! He will kill me too !" 
 
 He crept warily to the bureau, and fum- 
 bled there for a while. He found the match- 
 box, and hurriedly lit the candle. The flare 
 of the flame dazzled him at first, but he felt 
 for the razor with his right hand, at the 
 same time tilting the toilet-mirror so as to 
 reflect his image. He stared blinkingly 
 into it. 
 
 There are moments in life when the most 
 appalling sight a man can behold is the like- 
 ness of himself. Could a murderer catch a 
 glimpse of his own countenance at the in- 
 stant his hand is lifted for the blow, his 
 hand might well drop paralyzed. The 
 ghastly incongruities of delirium, confound- 
 ing the innocent child with the monstrous 
 suicide, may work to a crisis even more fear- 
 ful. Expecting to see the one, he is con- 
 fronted with the other. 
 
 With a shrill scream the victim of himself 
 dealt a frenzied blow at the phantom which 
 
132 
 
 grinned forth at him. The glass was shat- 
 tered ; the bat, terrified by the noise and be- 
 wildered by the light, blundered into the 
 flame and extinguished it. 
 
 For a while only the noise of quick and 
 heavy breathing disturbed the silence of the 
 midnight room. Then was heard the voice, 
 as it were, of a little boy, quavering out his 
 prayers to his Father in heaven, at his moth- 
 er's knees. The sacred, tender words fal- 
 tered and halted, and subsided into inartic- 
 ulate murmurs, as of a child falling asleep. 
 His ugly dreams were put to flight, and 
 peace brooded over his cradle. 
 
 The fairies returned. First one, then 
 another, alighted upon the roof ; then came 
 battalions and armies of them. Their myr- 
 iad trampling became a steady roar of muf- 
 fled music, soothing to distracted brain and 
 tortured nerves. All night long they held 
 high revel, and even the gray ghost of dawn 
 dispersed them not. But sin and death had 
 taken flight. 
 
XIII 
 
 ".Vain for thy lost Flock thy Grief, 
 Thine own self thou art the Thief. 
 More than Loss shall he regain 
 By whose Lamb his Wolf is slain." 
 
 |HAT day is this, Thomas?" 
 
 " Mornin', massa ! Dis Friday, 
 massa yas, sah." 
 
 " Are you sure?" 
 
 " Oh yes, sah. You been ve'y sick, massa ; 
 two, three days yas, sah." 
 
 " Friday ! Tell Martha to make me some 
 coffee ; something to eat. What's that noise 
 I hear?" 
 
 " Dat de river, sah ; river down, sah ; 
 couldn't get no doctor come ; rain two, 
 three days, sah ; say de bridge gone, massa." 
 
 " Friday ! What time is it, Thomas ?" 
 
 " T'ink 'bout nine, ten o'clock, massa." 
 
134 
 
 " Well, tell Martha you understand. 
 Look sharp, now !" 
 
 " Oh yes, massa ; glad you better, sah 
 yas, sah !" 
 
 When the man had gone Strathspey 
 raised himself on one elbow and looked 
 about the room. Everything appeared as 
 usual, except that no sunshine fell through 
 the windows, which faced the east. Ah, it 
 had been raining, and was still cloudy. Fri- 
 day! He was in bed; had been ill; certain- 
 ly, he was weak as a rag. How was it ? His 
 brain was like a barren country, in which no 
 thought would sprout. Tuesday yes ; but 
 Wednesday, Thursday? And this was Friday. 
 Round about this central point of mystery 
 his mind circulated like a fascinated animal. 
 He got out of bed at length, and, with as- 
 tonishment at his physical weakness, made 
 his way to the bureau. No distinct idea 
 took him there, but he vaguely fancied some 
 helpful hint might offer itself in that neigh- 
 borhood. The looking-glass was broken, 
 
135 
 
 and forced from its supports ; the fragments 
 of glass had been gathered up and piled to- 
 gether at one side. Beside them lay the ra- 
 zor without its case. Its place was in the 
 right-hand drawer. Pondering fruitlessly, 
 Strathspey opened this drawer, and saw, 
 amidst a confusion of articles, the envelope 
 containing Vivien's letter. He seized it as 
 a clew, and dragged himself back to bed. 
 Some rose petals fell out of it on the sheet. 
 Though the scenery of the memory is 
 continuous, only such passages as conscious- 
 ness authenticated remain accessible to the 
 mind. Strathspey could trace his acts up to 
 the time of his return to the veranda after 
 changing his dress ; after that the reins of 
 will had been wrested from him by some il- 
 legitimate agent, and he had been driven he 
 knew not whither. But during this blind- 
 fold career the bandage, so to speak, had 
 once or twice slipped aside, giving him a 
 glimpse of the situation. Such incoherent 
 impressions, however, explained nothing 
 
136 
 
 they but served to imply some sinister pre- 
 dicament. He had been whirled headlong 
 through the Bottomless Pit, from which 
 some influence as unknown as that which 
 had plunged him thither seemed to have 
 snatched him back alive. 
 
 But though the circumstances escaped 
 him, the effects remained. He was not the 
 man he had been. In place of intellectual, 
 he now had vital knowledge of human im- 
 potence and divine power. The period of 
 reasonings was past, and, like a child, he 
 cared only to see good and to do it. " I am 
 nothing God is everything," was the creed 
 he felt, and before it questions of justice and 
 compensation evaporated like mist in sun- 
 shine. 
 
 Desert implies reward ; but how should he 
 who of himself can do nothing be rewarded? 
 God alone works in man, and pays Himself 
 no wages. But though He does not reward, 
 all is His gift, for it is the gift of life, which 
 is Love. Over against the heavenly fulness 
 
137 
 
 stands that void of death which is man. 
 The fulness yearns to give itself to, to be 
 swallowed up and disappear in, the void and 
 become as the void's own ; so that while the 
 fulness alone is, the void alone may appear 
 to be : for thus to do is the genius of love. 
 Death cannot earn, but it can receive, life ; 
 and only when it insanely prefers the death 
 which it is to the life which would kill that 
 death is eager heaven kept waiting at its 
 sullen gates and the creative moment de- 
 layed. 
 
 Nothing final happens here, because mor- 
 tal man is equipoised between good and 
 evil, and may to the last freely incline either 
 way. Strathspey, if he would, might still 
 descend from the hard-won aerial turrets to 
 the sensual cellars of his house, and forget 
 in earthly gluttony the apocalyptic vision. 
 His best guarantee of safety was his recog- 
 nition of this truth, and, as he lay musing, 
 he told himself that he had no strength in 
 himself to resist temptation, and humbly 
 
138 
 
 hoped God would abate the power of the 
 enemy. 
 
 Meanwhile he shunned forecasts and casu- 
 istry, and was content to do what lay next 
 his hand. As the sick man dreads poison, 
 so did he dread to disguise or in any way 
 manipulate the truth: let it flow uncontam- 
 inated by human prudence or compassion. 
 Whatever it destroyed was well lost : noth- 
 ing else could bestow its blessings. He that 
 trusted to its eternal current, though losing 
 all else, would preserve what of his cargo 
 was of avail in the world of things incor- 
 ruptible. 
 
 When Thomas came back with the coffee 
 his master said, " Have the mare saddled 
 and at the door in half an hour." 
 
 "Yes, massa. Beg pard'n, massa you 
 goin' tak' a ride?" 
 
 " Why, I think of it, Thomas. It would 
 need a worse illness than I have had to pre- 
 vent me sitting a horse. I was brought up 
 on horses, Thomas. Don't be uneasy." 
 
139 
 
 "Yes, massa. Ain't no trouble 'bout sit- 
 tin' de ho'se, sah. It's de roads. Dey's 
 mighty bad dis mornin'; don' t'ink yo' git 
 ve'y far along dis mornin', massa ; no, sir." 
 
 " Oh, that's the trouble, is it ? Yes, I re- 
 member now ; you said the bridge had been 
 carried away, didn't you ?" 
 
 " Oh yes, massa." 
 
 " Well, I'll have to find some other way of 
 getting across, then. I can ride up to the 
 place the river starts from if nothing else 
 will do. You know, Thomas, where there's 
 a will there's a way. Tell Martha the coffee 
 is very good. I feel much better. Be off 
 with you now !" 
 
 Thomas went away with obvious misgiv- 
 ings. He knew more than his master about 
 the effect upon tropical rivers of tropical 
 rains; but he had said all he could. While 
 aggressive to maintain against all comers 
 that his buckra could outride any other 
 white man on the island and accomplish im- 
 possible feats without trying, yet when it 
 
came to crossing a furious torrent thirty 
 yards wide and as many feet in depth with- 
 out the aid of a bridge, he permitted himself 
 some private doubts. He confided them to 
 the mare only, whom he prepared with es- 
 pecial care for her journey, finally leading 
 her round to the front with a despondent 
 air, as if he feared never to enjoy another 
 opportunity to lavish on her those atten- 
 tions which she was not more blessed in 
 receiving than he in bestowing. Nor was he 
 comforted by the evident impatience of the 
 beautiful creature to be off. She danced 
 along with so light a hoof that one could 
 almost believe she could cross a river dry- 
 shod ; and she tossed up her delicate head, 
 as much as to say that air was her proper 
 sphere and she condescended to earth only 
 out of regard for etiquette. She and her 
 rider Thomas sadly reflected were a pair 
 afraid of nothing, and never in such good 
 spirits as when about to perpetrate some 
 such monstrous indiscretion as this. 
 
Hi 
 
 Strathspey, however, was far from regard- 
 ing as a perilous escapade the present expe- 
 dition. His habit of serio-comic dialogue 
 with the old darky had led him to humor 
 the latter ; but he had never seen a tropic 
 river in flood, and knew not what it por- 
 tended. He had forded streams in other 
 lands, and feared not getting his girths wet. 
 But in fact he wasted few thoughts on the 
 matter, his mind being bent on Yolande, 
 not as forecasting their interview, but as a 
 plant struggles through the soil to the light 
 by the instinct of its life. To stand idle was 
 not his cue, and in order to know what were 
 best be done, and how to do it, he must see 
 her, if only to agree with her to part. What- 
 ever else was obscure, at least they must un- 
 derstand each other. Until this colloquy 
 had taken place all was at pause. 
 
 After dressing slowly he felt exhausted, as 
 with a day's hard work. Those fifty or sixty 
 hours of illness had robbed him of the pith 
 of years. But his mind was abnormally 
 
142 
 
 lucid and sensitive to impressions. He had 
 had a similar experience in childhood. Un- 
 til he had entered upon the athletic life 
 which he had kept up through college and 
 never laid aside, he had been nervous and 
 delicate, suffering much from noises and 
 earthly frictions of all kinds. He had per- 
 ceptions which none round him understood 
 or shared, and which were far from welcome 
 to himself. For example, he would see his 
 companions environed with a sphere, dark, 
 bright, or colored, and attractive or repul- 
 sive, as the case might be. These airy radia- 
 tions or envelopes determined his personal 
 likes and dislikes, often in an inconvenient 
 manner. Sometimes, again, in the midst of 
 indifferent talk or occupation, he would sud- 
 denly see places at a distance and persons 
 whom he knew doing things there, later in- 
 formation uniformly confirming the correct- 
 ness of these visions. More rarely he would 
 be transported in spirit to scenes strange to 
 him, which he had no means of identifying ; 
 
H3 
 
 and occasionally in seasons of solitude and 
 reverie he had beheld beings and places 
 which he felt to be not of this earth, though 
 they had a perfect reality of their own. 
 
 All this had disturbed his immature mind, 
 and he had concealed it from his fellows 
 like a sin, lest they should ridicule him. By 
 nature he had not been fond of exercise ; 
 but he had given himself with ardor to out- 
 door exercise as soon as he was told that it 
 would " cure him of his nonsense," and the 
 prescription had not failed. The disease (or 
 faculty) had not returned till now, when for 
 the first time his physical stamina had col- 
 lapsed. As he buttoned the belt of his Nor- 
 folk jacket he saw, through twelve inches of 
 brick and plaster and a hedge of pimentos, 
 Thomas stealthily attach an Obeah charm 
 to the mare's surcingle as a security against 
 disaster; and while putting on his cap and 
 taking his riding-crop from its hook on the 
 wall he caught himself muttering, " The 
 cocoa-palm by the gate will fall as I pass," 
 
U4 
 
 repeating the words over and over mechan- 
 ically, as a child memorizes its lesson by rote. 
 He shook his head, laughed, and went out. 
 
 The mare became all palpitating springs 
 and electric vibrations as her master gath- 
 ered the reins in his left hand and put his 
 foot in the stirrup. When he was seated he 
 turned quietly to the old groom, who, with 
 his lean black arms crossed over his breast, 
 was ducking and bobbing and covertly re- 
 joicing at having slipped a curb between the 
 teeth of Fate, and said : 
 
 " Thomas, take that thing out." 
 "Yes, massa. . . . Begpa'd'n, massa?" fal- 
 tered Thomas, knowing that it was impossi- 
 ble Strathspey could have seen the "charm," 
 which, indeed, was nothing but the third toe 
 of a chicken wrapped up in a bit of rag cut 
 from the shift of a suckling babe and se- 
 cured with a piece of curly wool reft from 
 the head of a bride just before she crossed 
 her husband's threshold, and was thrust un- 
 der the surcingle on the right-hand side, 
 
145 
 
 where it must be quite invisible. Remem- 
 bering this, Thomas rapidly reflected that 
 his act could not have been detected, and 
 determined to brazen it out. The babe of 
 the shift was less innocent than Thomas 
 looked. 
 
 " Take it out at once !" Strathspey repeat- 
 ed, repressing his smile and forcing his brows 
 to frown. " For shame, sir! Your minister 
 shall know of this. And don't you know 
 that folks whose lives are saved by heathen 
 charms are bound to lose their souls to the 
 devil?" 
 
 " Massa'Thaspey," replied the negro, sad- 
 ly, removing the offending trinket, " a gen'- 
 mun like yo', sah, dat sees t'ings dat can't be 
 seed, he ain't in no danger anyway. But de 
 poo' mare, she ain't got no soul for de deb'l 
 to take ; so I t'ought no ha'm to save her 
 be'n' drownded, sah dat all." 
 
 " She shall come back, whatever happens 
 to me," answered the master, with a kindly 
 laugh ; and he rode away. 
 
XIV 
 
 As the Waves are not the Sea, 
 Bole and Branches not the Tree, 
 So of Thee I naught descry 
 Save what Self and Sense deny." 
 
 ,T was a morning such as is seen only 
 among tropical mountains in the 
 rainy season. The atmosphere was steaming 
 with magic and mystery. Pale mists were 
 drawn across the profiles of the peaks and 
 again snatched aside, as the diaphanous 
 gauzes of Oriental dancers now reveal, 
 now hide, their dusky undulations. Here 
 a wilderness of cloud brightened intolerably 
 in a white tide of sunlight, and yonder a 
 foggy shield was lifted between the be- 
 holder and the source of light, rimmed with 
 splendor and radiating glory. At times the 
 
147 
 
 rider seemed to float above silent oceans of 
 fleecy vapor, and anon through the centre of 
 the opaline whirlpool would appear dewy 
 valleys reaching far down into the sunlight 
 of a warmer world, or glimpses of romantic 
 heights clothed with fern and crowned with 
 palm. Vistas of remote defiles gleamed out 
 and vanished. Once a white-walled dwell- 
 ing, the culmination of a pyramid of distant 
 verdure, shone forth isolated, as if seen 
 through an opening in the sky. In lonely 
 passes the long, sweet double whistle of the 
 solitary filtered through the hush, intoning 
 the melodious pathos of unheeded nature. 
 It seemed at last as if the solid earth were 
 hastily remaking herself after having been 
 dissipated overnight, and, being rashly sur- 
 prised before her toilet was completed, had 
 not yet donned all her garments or even 
 condensed herself from the atmospheric 
 back into the substantial state. Nothing 
 would get in its right place. She tried a val- 
 ley here, a mountain there ; no ; then let 
 
148 
 
 them change places; but that was hardly 
 satisfactory either! And here was high 
 noon at hand and all those seas, archipela- 
 goes, and continents still in disarray ! " Ah !" 
 panted the lovely planet, " if ever I get my 
 equator round my waist and my snow- cap 
 on my head again, never more will I resolve 
 myself into my elements !" Unlike some 
 more sophisticated beauties, she did not 
 know that there was in her disorder some- 
 thing yet more enchanting than in her pre- 
 cise attire. 
 
 Strathspey rode at a foot pace. The pri- 
 vate road on which he was journeying was, 
 like most private roads in the island, steep 
 and rugged, and the rains of the past days 
 and nights had brought into prominence all 
 its thinly disguised evil of sharp stones and 
 treacherous crevices. Moreover, he had 
 given himself time and to spare. Four 
 o'clock was the earliest hour at which he 
 could present himself at his destination. 
 He meant to linger by the way and prepare 
 
149 
 
 himself, so far as he might, for the interview. 
 Perhaps, too, he might have to make a de- 
 tour in order to arrive below. And though 
 the air and scene revived him, he was in 
 no trim for hard riding. He must husband 
 what strength was left him. 
 
 Momentous though the coming interview 
 must be, Strathspey noticed, not without 
 surprise, that his mind and heart were singu- 
 larly free from preoccupation and anxiety. 
 He ascribed this serenity to his physical 
 weakness, which is apt to let cares smooth 
 themselves out for lack of energy to exas- 
 perate them. But he was happy as well as 
 calm. Not that he hoped for any specific 
 temporal felicity ; rather did he feel a pre- 
 sentiment that what he had of late so pas- 
 sionately craved was not to be his. But he 
 was happy because he had ceased to aspire 
 to personal gratification. His eyes were 
 turned away from that petty complex of de- 
 sires and fears that he called himself towards 
 a larger self, in which he now discerned the 
 
veritable contours of his human nature. No 
 harm could befall this larger self, for it dwelt 
 beyond the reach of mortal vicissitude ; nor 
 need it strive after blessings, since it was the 
 form which real blessing spontaneously as- 
 sumes. 
 
 He loved Yolande not less, but to a height 
 and depth far greater than before ; but the 
 question of winning or losing her no longer 
 occupied him. Already was she his in the 
 sense that the best he was capable of was 
 his ; and she was not his in the sense that 
 no one can claim ownership in immortal 
 treasure, but must be content to cleave to it 
 as to a saving and uplifting hand. On such 
 high terms the personal equation is either 
 cancelled or survives but as the memory of 
 a superseded expedient. 
 
 Although, therefore, she was his constant 
 thought, he concerned himself not as to what 
 he should say to her or she reply. Free 
 and glad were his meditations ; he and she 
 were parts of a whole whose orbed complete- 
 
ness could not be marred by accidents of 
 time and space ; though zenith, nadir, and 
 all the ages intervened, the curve of their 
 arc was not distraught ; it was secure as the 
 rainbow, because, like that, not^ human will, 
 but heavenly law, was its warrant. 
 
 He found a new delight, as he rode along, 
 in watching the beautiful fantasia going on 
 around him. Grown people are so used to 
 burden themselves with the gloom of their 
 mental scenery that external nature hardly 
 penetrates them. But now, to Strathspey, 
 these shadows and sunbursts, these heights 
 and dells, trees, birds, and all other particu- 
 lars, became not visible only, but transpar- 
 ent : answering to truths and affections in- 
 herent in himself, and thus forming a living 
 language an eternal and palpable Word of 
 God. Nature was the contents of Man pro- 
 jected by his Creator upon the screen of 
 sense, as the hues of the spectrum are the 
 analysis of the ray of white light. Nature 
 was thus because Man was so ; a change in 
 
152 
 
 the latter would modify the former. The ma- 
 terial fixity was not the reality, but merely 
 attested the constancy of the divine-human 
 relation. 
 
 What health and refreshment are in the 
 outward look ! What a transformation is 
 wrought in these squalid little interiors 
 when the windows are thrown open, the 
 doors lifted from their rusty hinges, and 
 the sun and breeze invited within ! In they 
 come, laden with bird song and flower fra- 
 grance ; the dingy old pictures that once 
 seemed so fine, the tawdry decoration, the 
 smirking furniture, the straitening walls 
 and stifling ceilings how poor are all these 
 painful devices and accumulations now ! 
 What barriers do we build against heavenly 
 influx ; in what cellars do we cower from it ; 
 with what snaky twistings do we wriggle 
 away from it ! What labors of Hercules 
 do we not urge to preserve in our hearts 
 that dull pain created by the hopeless strug- 
 gle to stand on the summit of our own mole- 
 
153 
 
 hill and believe it the crown and centre of 
 the world ! 
 
 The pen or estate appertaining to Strath- 
 spey's dwelling was of no small extent, and 
 the winding road which traversed it was 
 some two miles in length. It crept this way 
 and that, avoiding a rugged spur of the hill 
 there, here skirting the brink of a deep gully 
 or trench in the crumbly soil, twenty or 
 thirty feet down, in the usually dry chan- 
 nel of which now rushed a turbid torrent. 
 Sometimes it passed through groves of eb- 
 ony and logwood ; sometimes it scaled a 
 naked mass of rock, or stole beneath the 
 leafy arches of a dusky dingle. A gray 
 mongoose undulated across the path ; dull 
 cattle stared stupidly at the rider as he 
 passed ; a black pickaninny with a huge bas- 
 ket of vegetables on its head pattered by 
 him with round shining eyes and a chirp of 
 " Marnin', massa !" At length he thread- 
 ed a plantation of bananas, drooping their 
 broad green banners, and came in sight of 
 
154 
 
 the gate of the enclosure, at the foot of a de- 
 clivity. 
 
 Beyond the gate the high road was visible 
 to the right and left for a distance of a quar- 
 ter of a mile or more. On the hither side of 
 the entrance grew a tall cocoa-palm, a land- 
 mark far and near; for these trees are sel- 
 dom seen on the heights of the island, and 
 bear no edible fruit so far from the sea. 
 The palm stood on the verge of a little ter- 
 race a few feet in height, now almost sub- 
 merged in the waters of a pond which had 
 been formed there by the rains. 
 
 It made a pretty picture ; the towering 
 tree reflected in the shining mirror. Strath- 
 spey glanced at it as he guided his mare 
 down the awkward footing of the slope, but 
 did not recall at the moment his recent 
 ominous prevision of it. He was asking 
 himself whether he would be able to open 
 the gate with his riding-crop, or whether he 
 would have to dismount for that purpose. 
 He halted a moment to look up and down 
 
155 
 
 the stretch of high-road, should perchance 
 some errant darky be within hail. No hu- 
 man creature met his eyes. 
 
 " If I'd had my wits about me, I'd have 
 chartered that little pickaninny with the bas- 
 ket," said he to himself. "As it is, I'm 
 afraid I'll have trouble. The mare is as 
 restive as a water-beetle. Cusha, old girl ! 
 steady!" 
 
 He went forward again, patting her neck, 
 while she capered fantastically sidewise, her 
 quick, sharp ears now pricked forward, now 
 folded back like an angry kitten's. She 
 was not wont to behave thus. Strathspey 
 laughed a little. "Cusha, Cusha! Don't 
 you love me any more, because I've been 
 ill ?" 
 
 They were at the foot of the slope. Five- 
 and-twenty yards more would bring them to 
 the gate. The palm stood less than half 
 that distance this side of it, on the right. 
 The footing here, though slippery with small 
 plashets of water, was stony and firm. 
 
156 
 
 Cusha danced forward, three hoofs off the 
 ground at a time. 
 
 A little gust of wind came up in haste 
 from the west. It had nothing to do ; it 
 tossed itself among the mighty fronds of 
 the great palm. They waved slightly, sibi- 
 lating to one another. No further impulse 
 was needed. The palm bent noiselessly 
 towards the road, its tough old roots, long 
 since undermined and unfettered by the 
 subtle waters, softly slipping from their 
 moorings in the liquefied soil. As the 
 straight stem stooped, still retaining its stark 
 rigidity, its impetus increased. It was timed 
 to strike the earth at the same instant that 
 the horse and rider intersected the plane 
 of its arc. Horse and rider the latter, at 
 least, totally unconscious of death so near 
 and sudden, came on to meet the appoint- 
 ment. 
 
 " Angus ! the tree ! Leap for your life !" 
 
 That voice, calling him for the first time 
 
 by name, and never heard till now above the 
 
157 
 
 gentle modulations of conversation, was 
 recognized in every nerve of his body and 
 instinct of his soul, and searched his heart 
 like the silver summons of a trumpet. It 
 kindled him from head to heel. He glanced 
 not aside to see the danger, whose sweeping 
 onset he felt, not saw. His spurs pricked 
 Cusha's satin sides. She knew the lift of 
 the rein, the impulse of the sharply mut- 
 tered word. Two short onward springs she 
 made, measuring her distance, her elastic 
 muscles coiling like tempered steel ; then, 
 light and deft as a cat, she rose erect, 
 spurned the earth, and flew forward. The 
 margin was narrow. Ere her black hoofs 
 touched ground again, on the farther side 
 of the gate, the giant flail of the palm-tree 
 smote the road behind her, grazing her fleet 
 heels in its descent. Spirit of Antaeus, 
 what a blow ! But it was dealt a fraction of 
 a second too late. 
 
 Strathspey patted her neck, his eyes 
 sparkling. And there, on a wonderful white 
 
158 
 
 horse, erect and joyous, her face radiant 
 with triumph and love, and flushing with 
 immortal youth, her eyes greeting him as 
 might an angel's greet her lover new come 
 to Paradise, was Yolande ! 
 
XV 
 
 Not the Diamond, but its Light 
 Not the Arrow, but its flight 
 Love, and not the Lover are 
 Beauty's soul and Avatar." 
 
 sun dilated and sent forth a 
 mightier effulgence ; the landscape 
 expanded and assumed more exquisite pro- 
 portions ; its hues were soft as air and bright 
 as jewels. The blue of the sky won you 
 like the depth of loving eyes, wooing you to 
 gaze deeper and deeper, indrawing you for- 
 ever through warm abysses of sun-shot space 
 towards the sources of the unseen stars. Up 
 climbed snowy bastions and pinnacles of 
 cloud, height above height, moulded in 
 stately terraces and shining caves, taking 
 the breath with tender miracles of grandeur ; 
 
i6o 
 
 poised on coigns of vantage angelic spirits 
 seemed to stand, robed in the fleece of rain- 
 bows. The atmosphere was tremulous with 
 waitings of faint music, distant choruses of 
 birds of Eden ; perfumes, aromas of young 
 love, the breathing soul of flower-beds of 
 Paradise, distilled in drops of happiness into 
 the heart. Paeans of pure life re-echoed ev- 
 erywhere ; you could almost hear the sap 
 humming in the trees, whose stirring leaves 
 .uttered delicate syllables of vegetable felic- 
 ity. There were beautiful animals in the 
 coverts, gliding beneath overarching sprays, 
 standing at gaze with spirited heads and 
 shining eyes ; peeping through windows of 
 verdure ; rustling unseen through serried 
 stems of nodding lilies. Humming-birds 
 broke out on all sides, like flashes of the 
 prism caught in mid-air and incarnated ; and 
 hollow cups and curving trumpets of flowers, 
 heavy with honey, were created on the in- 
 stant to feed them. Two of these tiny ex- 
 quisites of the air came and hovered round 
 
Yolande's face, as if seeking to become pen- 
 dants of her ear-rings. 
 
 The smooth white road, glistening like 
 crystal, wound away along the hill-sides, now 
 seen, now lost, receding into distances of 
 misty chrysoprase and sapphire, passing 
 over slender bridges that suspended their 
 gleaming arches across purple ravines, yon- 
 der clambering venturously aloft to the ivory 
 ramparts and sparkling casements of fairy 
 castles gathered in the zenith. Downwards 
 again it ran through shimmering valleys 
 towards the tinted levels of the dreaming 
 plain, past shadowed hamlets and clustered 
 villages, onwards towards the enchanted 
 city that lay twinkling and palpitating in 
 golden haze beside the azure reaches of the 
 everlasting sea. 
 
 Did Strathspey see all these things? 
 There are states of the soul in which percep- 
 tion is omnipresent and paramount without 
 effort ; sight becomes emotion, and emotion 
 sight. He looked only at Yolande, and all 
 
162 
 
 these things were added unto him. She ir- 
 radiated the world around her; or that 
 world was she the secularization, so to say, 
 of her beauty, her nobility, her purity, truth, 
 and goodness. When love has created heav- 
 en in the heart it is not strange that we 
 should seem girt with Paradise. We do not 
 need to examine it with an inventory ; we 
 know that it must be there. 
 
 But surely Yolande herself appeared more 
 than mortal this morning. Strathspey could 
 not have told in what point she seemed 
 fairer, sweeter, more immortally alive and 
 brimming with lovely energy than when he 
 saw her last ; but so it was. Was it merely 
 that he saw her in clearer light ? In truth, 
 he had never known an atmosphere so trans- 
 lucent as this they now breathed ; it was 
 more than clear it was luminous; it was 
 aerial diamond. In its embrace material 
 substance sparkled with inherent life ; there 
 was nothing dead in the world. Yolande, 
 sitting there on her wonderful horse, was not 
 
changed. If she looked more beautiful, it 
 was only because he saw her better ; the af- 
 ternoon and evening shadows of her veranda, 
 down in the lower land, had impeded his 
 vision. And as he saw her more distinctly, 
 so was his insight into her nature clarified, 
 as if the eyes of his body and of his in- 
 telligence were identical. The meeting of 
 her glance with his had almost the effect of 
 speech or had they already actually spoken? 
 The joyful surprise which his leap into her 
 unexpected presence had given him made 
 him doubtful whether or not he had observed 
 the forms of greeting. Had he even thanked 
 her for having saved his life ? 
 
 Hereupon Yolande laughed. " You were 
 asleep, and I woke you," said she. " Is not 
 this glorious? See what a world your com- 
 ing has made for us !" 
 
 " If it were less glorious I should think I 
 was still asleep, and dreaming it," said he. 
 " But I could never dream anything like 
 this. And you are here !" 
 
164 
 
 " When you bade me good-night, down 
 there, I promised myself I would ride to 
 meet you, and give you a surprise." She 
 paused a moment and then added, while her 
 face lightened with a smile, " I have been 
 with you longer than you think ; you did 
 not recognize me till now. My beloved, I 
 shall always be where you are !" 
 
 " Was I so ill as that ? And you came to 
 me !" 
 
 Was it possible that she had tended him in 
 his sickness? Why had they not told him? 
 
 "You did not know me, because you 
 didn't know yourself," she went on. " It 
 was all dark. But it's over now, and you are 
 well, and all is well and right ! It was 
 never so bad as you thought it was. And 
 oh, my love, I love you so much more since 
 it is all cleared up ! That secret shut your 
 heart so I could not get into it, and yet I 
 didn't know I was shut out. But now 
 there is no tiniest corner or nook in your 
 whole heart in which I am not !" 
 
Strathspey held his breath. 
 
 So she knew all ; in his delirium he had 
 uncovered the truth before her ; and the idea 
 of forgiving him had not so much as entered 
 her head she simply loved him more than 
 ever ! Her eyes, in which happiness shone 
 like a star, told him that. He had been sick 
 almost to death in body and soul; but if she 
 could, without shrinking, enter his heart and 
 welcome him to hers, he must be sane and 
 sound again. How had he been healed ? 
 " It was no thanks to me none of my do- 
 ing !" he thought, with a strange joy. As the 
 leper rose up clean, as Lazarus came forth 
 alive in his grave-clothes, so from the ashes 
 of pride and self-sufficiency had the Lord, 
 Who still walked the earth in mercy, kindled 
 in him a new life, and from the abysm of evil 
 fate restored him to the freshness and morn- 
 ing of strength. 
 
 " All I can do is to say, * Thank God !' I 
 deserve nothing and I get everything," he 
 said, bending over under pretence of adjust- 
 
i66 
 
 ing his stirrup. " Seems to me," he went on, 
 trying to clear his voice, " the only thanks 
 God will take is willingness to receive some- 
 thing more from Him. Of course, I know 
 there can be no ratio between Him and me ; 
 still, a man can't help wishing he could do 
 something." 
 
 " Why, beloved," said Yolande, with glow- 
 ing face, and a voice soft as dew, " there is a 
 ratio. He meets us in our nature, which He 
 created, and veils Himself in it, so that we 
 may come near to Him. It is because He 
 is there that we love each other, for Creation 
 is love, and love needs love in return. And 
 when we love each other we thank Him, for 
 loving is doing His will." 
 
 Strathspey looked at her sitting on her 
 white horse, stately and sweet as a flower. 
 The sunlight rested on her pearl-gray habit, 
 with facings of white silk ; the breeze stirred 
 the plume of white owl's feathers on her hat ; 
 she was so humanly beautiful and yet there 
 was something unearthly about her. He 
 
i6 7 
 
 felt a sudden fear lest she dwelt in a sphere 
 other than his, and that never would he be 
 able to reach or comprehend her. Stronger 
 than death must be the love that would hold 
 him to her height. If he were to lose her 
 now ! 
 
 As if divining what passed in his mind, 
 she smiled with such comfort and assurance 
 that his courage revived, like a soldier sore 
 beset who sees help at hand. 
 
 " Why are you troubled ? I really believe 
 you're afraid to be happy, sir ! You needn't 
 be ; it's what we were made for." 
 
 He laughed. " I should feel safer, though, 
 if I could go off and fight a giant somewhere, 
 like those old knight-errants. I'm like the 
 man in the parable, without a wedding gar- 
 ment." 
 
 Yolande gave him one of her slow, fath- 
 omless looks. 
 
 " I prayed the Lord we might meet like 
 this, and He permitted it," she said, in an 
 inward tone. " I thought you'd be glad to 
 
i68 
 
 know, to have seen for yourself, how it is 
 with me here. You've had so much unhap- 
 piness, my own beloved !" 
 
 Something in her look and voice warned 
 him ; he lifted his head with the masculine 
 alertness characteristic of him. 
 
 "There's to be a giant, then? What is 
 it ? I can fight him !" 
 
 She kept her eyes unswervingly upon him, 
 as if to supplement his courage with hers. 
 "A small giant, who will turn out a friend 
 in disguise. All you have to do is to be- 
 lieve that I am yours arid love you." 
 
 He laughed again. 
 
 "Isn't that too easy?" 
 
 She stroked the silken mane of her horse 
 thoughtfully. 
 
 " Do you believe enough in me not to be 
 anxious while we are together to-day ? Will 
 you be content with my saying that I am 
 your Yolande, and I love you forever?" 
 
 The memory came back to him with a 
 surge of passionate tenderness of that mo- 
 
ment on the veranda when, with her lips on 
 his, she had spoken those words into his 
 heart. 
 
 " I'm content," he said, briefly. " Beside 
 that nothing matters !" 
 
 But she still mused, and spoke again in 
 the same grave, lingering tone. 
 
 " Think what we are to each other ! not 
 lifeless things, to be found and lost, but each 
 is created the other's inmost life, closer and 
 surer the more all else falls from us. And 
 our happiness can never fail, for it is built 
 on no care for our own gain, but on the will 
 of each for the well-being of the other, and 
 so it must grow greater through eternity." 
 
 These words opened the very heart of 
 love, which wills all it has to be another's, 
 and feels that other's delight as its own. 
 Through the years of his after-life Strath- 
 spey could always recall Yolande as she 
 then appeared, stationed on a little emi- 
 nence above him, illuminated by the mel- 
 low sunshine and relieved against the glo- 
 
i ;o 
 
 ries of the sky. And he seemed to see, as it 
 were, the sky open around her, and a gath- 
 ering of many faces of pure light, of aspect 
 resembling hers, and speaking in harmony 
 through her voice. It did not seem strange 
 at the time, so permeated with life were all 
 things. But blessed is the lover who can 
 thus behold his mistress framed in heaven 
 and at one with angels ! 
 
 As she ceased speaking the vision passed 
 into natural elements ; the seraphic faces 
 were a concourse of fleecy clouds, and the 
 choiring voices that inner pulsation of dis- 
 tant bird and insect song which in summer 
 fills the ear without our consciously hearing 
 it. Yolande put her horse in motion, and 
 was once more the simple girl that he loved 
 with all his heart. 
 
 " Come, let us ride," said she ; " this is 
 our enchanted kingdom. Come, Sir Angus !" 
 
 He caught from her tone the contagion of 
 pure youthful joy in existence. Joy welled 
 forth in him like a brimming river, not self- 
 
centred, but seeking to send abroad currents 
 of delight to sweeten and refresh the world. 
 
 " Where shall we ride ?" asked he. 
 
 " I want to show you the place we are to 
 live in. Until you're ready to come for 
 good, I shall do the best I can with it ; but 
 of course that is nothing to what it will be 
 when we've lived in it together for a while. 
 It's lovely, though, even now." 
 
 Without fully understanding what she 
 meant, he rode on beside her. What a 
 morning for a ride ! 
 
 Her horse was pure white, with points of 
 an Arab. But Strathspey, who from his 
 youth had loved horses, and whose own 
 Cusha was not easily to be matched, had 
 never seen an animal approaching this in 
 beauty and power. Cusha hardly seemed to 
 belong to the same order of beings. This 
 was a horse such as poets say Pegasus is 
 all airy fleetness, symmetry, and grace, in 
 whose dark eyes was the fire of unquench- 
 able courage, and yet the gentleness of a 
 
172 
 
 great white dove. Wings he needed not ; 
 though when Strathspey was not looking 
 directly at him, he could half fancy a feath- 
 ery sweep of snowy pinions which, with a 
 single wave, could send horse and rider 
 heavenward through the diamond air. He 
 seemed made for Yolande, so perfectly fit- 
 ted to her were his spirit and splendor. If 
 her stainless mind had conceived and given 
 body to an ideal steed, thus and not other- 
 wise must he have appeared. 
 
 Cusha, who had never been lacking in 
 courage, was at first not like herself in the 
 presence of her new associate ; she was much 
 disturbed, and trembled perceptibly as she 
 moved. Noticing this, Yolande spoke to 
 her in a soothing voice by name (how did 
 she know her name?), and soon the mare 
 quieted down, and kept on as best she might 
 beside her shining companion. 
 
 " What an air this is !" exclaimed Strath- 
 spey, taking in a long breath of it. " When 
 I started out this morning I was feeling 
 
173 
 
 limp and shaky as an old lay-figure; but 
 now I'm elastic and keen as a boy. I could 
 ride with you right up the side of that great 
 cloud, and jump off the top into the blue 
 sky ! Is it a cloud, or is it a snow mountain ? 
 I never was alive till now !" 
 
 " We'll visit the stars together," returned 
 Yolande, " and drive comets in our chariot, 
 four-in-hand. Delightful people live over 
 there in the Pleiades, and one of the planets 
 there has nine moons. Then there's a place 
 in Orion where we can sit out on the great 
 silver terrace after sunset, and see a solar 
 system being made, over opposite." 
 
 "And how shall we get home at night?" 
 inquired he. " Shall we coast down the zo- 
 diac on a meteor?" 
 
 " We can make our thoughts into an eagle, 
 and ride in the warm feathers between his 
 wings. Nothing else can carry us so swiftly, 
 or keep us so comfortable through the cold 
 place on the other side of the Milky Way." 
 
 " And how homelike it will seem when we 
 
174 
 
 have passed Neptune and Uranus, and see 
 the lamps lighted in Saturn and Jupiter as 
 we pass by ! We must keep our eagle well 
 in hand, or he will plunge us into the sun. I 
 think I'll have a net stretched between Mars 
 and Venus, in case of our forgetting." 
 
 They looked at each other and laughed. 
 " It's a small universe, after all, compared 
 with our own !" said she, sending him a 
 heavenly glance. Paradise rioted in his soul. 
 
 Down a gentle descent they rode into a 
 vale of fairy-land. Slender trees spread deli- 
 cate boughs over their heads, laden with 
 large blossoms. Through these the light, 
 descending, cast rainbow glows upon them. 
 Now he saw a rosy flush envelop her as she 
 was swept along ; now she plunged into an 
 effulgence of aerial gold ; now for an instant 
 she was bathed in amethyst ; and anon a 
 snow-white splendor was shed around her, 
 and suited her best of all. To right and left 
 meanwhile opened myriad- columned aisles 
 of a sylvan temple, resounding with stormy 
 
ecstasies of bird music; and yonder, surely, 
 the pearly flank of a wood-nymph glanced 
 amidst the verdure, and the tanned shoulder 
 of a smiling pursuing faun. All nature, at 
 times, puts on a human glamour, and leads a 
 dance of delectable masqueraders through 
 her mystic solitudes. Horny-eyed terrestri- 
 als see them not, but to the fine perception 
 of lovers they are exquisitely visible. 
 
 Emerging from this glade, they skirted 
 the base of a tall cliff, and came suddenly 
 upon a rocky pool, into which leaped joyful- 
 ly down the frosty rush of a cataract. The 
 terraces of gray-stone over which it tumbled 
 had become clothed with arras of iridescent 
 moss, on which gem -like drops vibrated; 
 torrents of fine -wrought maidenhair poured 
 from the oozy clefts, and giant ferns spanned 
 the basin with arching fronds. Glancing 
 over and between enamelled bowlders, the 
 stream kicked up its silvery heels and frol- 
 icked across the road, to disappear in deep- 
 tinted sedge on the other side, setting the 
 
1 7 6 
 
 tall stems of purple irises and scarlet car- 
 dinal - flowers a - quiver. To this spot sun- 
 shine came but in golden disks and patches, 
 variegating the transparent green of the 
 shadows. But glancing up through the in- 
 terstices of broad, enroofing leaves, you could 
 catch glimpses of a velvet azure sky. 
 
 Cusha stooped her pretty head to drink, 
 drawing the sweet water into her silken 
 throat with pleasant sighs; but the white 
 steed barely tasted it (out of courtesy, as it 
 were), doubtless preferring to slake his thirst 
 on the heights where the clouds of heaven 
 are first distilled into liquid crystal. Mean- 
 while a colony of purple violets despatched 
 an embassy of priceless perfume to Yolande, 
 and a blackbird, too shy to be seen, trilled 
 out a tumult of melodious welcome, which 
 the skilfullest human musician would have 
 tortured his instrument in vain to echo. 
 
 " What is that delicious whispering under- 
 tone that flows in every few moments?" 
 asked Strathspey. " Except I know that 
 
177 
 
 the sea is miles and miles away, I should 
 hope it was the ocean surf upon the shore." 
 
 Yolande lifted her chin with a princely 
 smile. 
 
 " If my beloved wants the sea, he shall 
 have it," she said. " Didn't I tell you this 
 was our enchanted kingdom, which serves 
 our wishes in all things ? Come with me." 
 
 She cantered on across the brook, fling- 
 ing up a glitter of spray as she passed, and 
 so forward to where the road curved round 
 the profile of the steep, he following. On 
 doubling the point, there was revealed what 
 seemed a miracle. A deep bay, hitherto 
 concealed by an intermediate promontory, 
 had made its way far inland from the gen- 
 eral coast -line, and brought its blue -green 
 depths of waters almost to their feet. The 
 shore was precipitous, and the road went in 
 and out along the face of the sea-front at a 
 height of some fifty feet above the tide. 
 The waves lapped narrow beaches of coral 
 sand, and great fragments of coral rock rose 
 
up islet-wise out of the flood, tufted and 
 fringed with tropic green. Looking down 
 from their elevation into the sheltered in- 
 lets of the bay, they saw below the surface 
 the luxuriant color and strange graces of 
 life under sea : fish, blue-tailed and orange- 
 fmned, or rose-pink from stem to stern, with 
 keels of silver ; creatures like crystal bells, 
 with long-depending streamers, purple and 
 gold ; anemones swaying their jewelled ten- 
 tacles sheaf-like in the translucent currents ; 
 great shells, rosy-lipped and pearl-spired ; sea- 
 weeds of all hues and shapes, beneath whose 
 shelter weird crabs gathered their skeleton 
 claws in ambush. And then they looked 
 farther off over the glossy backs of turquoise 
 heavings and sapphire subsidings, a mile or 
 more, to where the outer reef turned to long 
 lines of snowy thunder the rolling onset of 
 ocean. Farther yet the dark-blue line stood 
 clear against the pearly pallor of the horizon, 
 whence blew a breeze full of such tameless 
 life as made the blood caper in the veins 
 
179 
 
 and the heart yearn with mysterious long- 
 ings to sail forth and be lost in those august 
 solitudes. 
 
 To the left the long line of cliffs deployed, 
 white-footed and shaggy-browed, upon the 
 level reaches, fading away from greens, 
 through purples, to evanescent blues. From 
 their summits, seeming incorporate with 
 them, opalescent castles aspired flame -like 
 in the magic light. Close at hand dipped 
 and soared keen-winged gulls, their breasts 
 pure as the salt wind and foam on which 
 they lived. 
 
 Strathspey gazed and gazed. " Is this 
 the world?" murmured he. 
 
 " The world marriage makes," said Yo- 
 lande, in a voice that spoke rather to his 
 heart than ear. 
 
 Leisurely, as though borne on happy mus- 
 ings, they rode along the windings of the 
 stately coast until they crossed a tall bridge 
 and saw a cleft deeply penetrating the face 
 of the land. Up this they rode. 
 
i8o 
 
 Here prevailed coolness and soft shadow. 
 A brook a succession of little waterfalls 
 plashing into clear pools on whose margin 
 blue flowers clustered and bearded mosses 
 hung, passed downward beside them as 
 they mounted. High up wide boughs inter- 
 laced, and every leaf was still. The riders, 
 too, were silent, and drew more closely to- 
 gether. With the shadows their mood be- 
 came more intimate, but more serious, also. 
 They were passing from one vision of life to 
 another, and were sensible of their mutual 
 dependence. One of the secret felicities of 
 lovers is to be still and know that love is all. 
 
 Twice or thrice, through a gap in the foli- 
 age, as through a window in a tower, they 
 saw a wide and wider gleam of the beauty 
 from which they were receding ; but of 
 what awaited them they could surmise 
 nothing. Gradually the atmosphere became 
 less slumberous, the light stronger, and little 
 breezes ventured down between the enclos- 
 ing walls to learn who visited their eyries. 
 
r8i 
 
 The horses sniffed the air and struck their 
 hoofs sharply on the firm white road. A few 
 minutes later they had surmounted the as- 
 cent, and were trotting briskly along a level 
 way, which debouched upon a lofty upland. 
 It was a mount of vision, from which the 
 various regions of their wanderings lay re- 
 vealed, as well as others hitherto unknown. 
 
 But Strathspey, disregarding the wide-ex- 
 tended beauty of the past and the remote, 
 fixed his eyes upon what immediately con- 
 fronted him. 
 
 Nothing could have been more unexpected 
 than this noble object, and yet, no sooner 
 was it seen than it took its place among its 
 surroundings as if the latter had been called 
 into existence especially to adorn it. It 
 seemed a natural growth, the key and cul- 
 mination of the scene. It harmonized earth 
 and sky, and was familiar with the sun. It 
 supplied the human element, without which 
 nature is but stem without flower. And as 
 Strathspey looked upon it, tears came to his 
 
182 
 
 eyes ; because, though now seen for the first 
 time, it touched the chord of home in his 
 heart. Surely the roots of his being were en- 
 twined with these foundations ; memories of 
 infancy, of father and mother, lurked in the 
 depths of those windows ; here were walls 
 which had witnessed the games and musings 
 of his boyhood, and porches and gables in 
 which his young manhood had plotted con- 
 quests of the world. Whatever in his life 
 had been innocent, generous, and good was 
 related to the form and substance of this 
 gracious structure, and yet all was new where 
 nothing was strange : for here was a future 
 interpreting what had gone before, and steep- 
 ing past ideals in its own rich atmosphere. 
 Up yonder stairways of promise his soul 
 ascended to shining turrets of fulfilment, 
 whence he saw, vivifying every part, the 
 might of his love for Yolande. In the 
 countless qualities of purity and grace, 
 which he might dimly have desired but 
 was impotent to create, he recognized this 
 
as her home as well as his the home and 
 symbol of their union. 
 
 Suddenly, without warning, his heart began 
 to beat heavily. He felt the approach of 
 some untoward event. He turned quickly 
 to Yolande, trying to command himself. 
 
 " Where are we what is this ?" he asked. 
 " Is all real that has been going on to-day ? 
 It seems silly to ask, but I've been ill may- 
 be I'm not straight yet. I've been taking 
 things as they came, but now I. can't seem 
 to account for I don't " 
 
 He was unable to go on. Some change 
 was at hand. Despite an indistinctness in 
 his vision, he could discern the face of Yo- 
 lande meeting with steadfast eyes the trouble 
 of his appeal. But her look also expressed 
 a passion of loving sympathy that warned 
 him his fear was not groundl-ess. 
 
 He heard her say, " All we have seen and 
 done is real and true, beloved. This is our 
 country and our home." 
 
 He divined something ominous waiting be- 
 
1 84 
 
 hind her words, and as a wounded man would 
 pluck from his body the arrow that prolongs 
 the agony of life, so did he snatch at the 
 knowledge of the worst. 
 
 " But there's something between us I feel 
 it !" he said, with a break of the voice. 
 
 She made no response. 
 
 "Yolande, I've felt it from the first we 
 cannot marry in this world never," he said, 
 after a silence, in a dull tone. " I should fail 
 I should disenchant you I'm not worthy. 
 God won't permit it !" 
 
 She was still mute. A sort of helpless 
 frenzy seized him. 
 
 " I can't give you up !" he said, fiercely. 
 
 Her eyes no longer met his they looked 
 beyond or above him, and her face was like 
 marble, giving no sign. The time had come 
 to him as come it must to all when in the 
 solitude of his spirit he must meet and know 
 God ; and upon that awful meeting no other 
 soul dare intrude. 
 
 He bent forward, closing his eyes, till his 
 
forehead rested on Cusha's mane, which he 
 had grasped with his right hand. 
 
 In this final struggle the temptations of 
 the past came back with greater power. For 
 it seemed to him that on the issue hung the 
 fate of Yolande's soul. If he clung to her, 
 she would go downward with him ; if he re- 
 linquished her, she would go from him to 
 God. He was now to choose whether he 
 would lose her to heaven, or have her in 
 hell if where she was hell could be ! 
 
 To give her up for her own sake but oh, 
 to give her up ! 
 
XVI 
 
 "'Our little Life is rounded with a Sleep' 
 
 Our larger Life is from a Sleep, a Waking : 
 I love you! Hark! Deep calleth unto deep 
 * Earth is Love's Dream of Life Death, 
 Love's Day breaking!'" 
 
 lOLANDE, are you there?" 
 
 " I am here," came the well-loved 
 voice. He looked up. The day had be- 
 come overcast, and Yolande had drawn 
 back, so as to be out of his sight. From 
 a ravine at his feet arose a sluggish mist ; 
 opposite, five hundred yards away, a mass of 
 castellated rock assumed a fanciful likeness 
 to a human habitation. He had but closed 
 his eyes a few moments, to open them on this 
 duskiness and change ! 
 
 He too had changed. The sensation of 
 abounding life was gone ; the weakness and 
 
weariness felt on awakening that morning 
 had come back with added weight. It was 
 as if old age had unawares descended upon 
 him. With the feebleness, however, had 
 come a composure and resignation, as of 
 one who, having striven long and passion- 
 ately to find some great treasure in the 
 world, has at length laid aside the fierce 
 longing that dominated him, and henceforth 
 has no other aim than to accept quietly 
 whatever life is given him, and to die, when 
 his time comes, gratefully. All will to grasp 
 what had seemed his own, all questionings, 
 even the ache of surrender, had departed 
 from his soul. And as the moon rises over 
 the ruins of a battle-field, so a faint light of 
 peace rose upon ruins of what his heart had 
 fought for and lost, and chastened them to 
 a grave seemliness. 
 
 Cusha lifted her head, gazed this way and 
 that, and whinnied. She missed the white 
 steed. 
 
 "Yolande," he said again, "it has seemed 
 
1 88 
 
 more like heaven than earth what you've 
 shown me to-day. I think it must have been 
 your companionship that transfigured every- 
 thing. But you've shown me too the dis- 
 tance between us. It isn't in me I'm too 
 old and spoilt to live your life with you. 
 You've been illuminating me with your own 
 light, until you've made yourself (and me, al- 
 most) believe me a very fine creature; but 
 the sober truth is I'm a commonplace sort of 
 fellow, and I found you many years too late. 
 You're going up, I down ; every day would 
 leave us further apart ; and I won't be such 
 a brute as to take advantage of your illu- 
 sions, and tie you down by " 
 
 It seemed to him that she spoke ; but she 
 was still placed somewhere out of his range 
 of vision, and after a pause he added : 
 
 "But I may be of use to you in some ways 
 without the risk of becoming a drag on you. 
 There were beautiful young queens in the 
 old times ; there were beautiful young queens 
 of whom a thousand knights asked no other 
 
favor than privilege to fight and die for them. 
 You are worthier than they of devotion, my 
 dear, and I am but a single champion, and 
 not good for much ; but upon what there is of 
 me you can depend for as much or as little 
 as you want. The gage of favor you hung 
 round my neck is still, and always will be, 
 there. 1 mean, that as your friend I sha'n't 
 be afraid to grow old, and you won't need to 
 shorten your young steps not to outstrip 
 mine. Like the good fairy, I shall turn up 
 at the right moments, and at no others ! 
 And long before I'm ready for a better world, 
 you will have made in this a heaven for some 
 honest young chap, and we all three shall 
 be happy and comfortable. Well, isn't that 
 good sense?" 
 
 Thinking it might embarrass Yolande if he 
 turned to look at her at this moment of giv- 
 ing her her freedom, he sat after speaking as 
 before, with his eyes on the ravine, from which 
 mists continued sluggishly to arise. 
 
 Her first words were so gently uttered it 
 
190 
 
 was sweet to hear them, though their pur- 
 port seemed but a recognition of what he 
 had proposed. 
 
 " You are right our marriage cannot be 
 here ; a wisdom greater than ours has de- 
 cided that. But it was I, not you, that was 
 unfit. You have met the world and known 
 it, right and wrong, and you are strong and 
 weak as men are ; but my life was all thought 
 and hopes and wonderings I wasn't fit for 
 real things. I couldn't have made you hap- 
 py," she concluded, in a tone like the sound 
 of love itself. 
 
 " The only fault in you is that God made 
 you for heaven, and you live on earth ; mine 
 is the other way I tried to enter a heaven I 
 didn't belong in," interrupted he, resentful of 
 criticism of her even from herself. " Thank 
 God, I came to my senses in time !" 
 
 " Persons whose souls belong together are 
 sometimes parted by their bodies," said she. 
 " If you and I could meet as spirits do, we 
 should meet indeed ! Spirits don't grow old. 
 
or have misunderstandings and disappoint- 
 ments. We might marry then, and have no 
 such hinderances as we otherwise might." 
 
 " My body is no favorite of mine," said he, 
 with a half-smile and a shake of the head, 
 " but here it is, and I must put up with it !" 
 
 " But even while our bodies are serving us 
 here our spirits live in the world of spirits, 
 and sometimes, when our earthly senses are 
 closed, we see and hear spiritual things." 
 
 "Ah, but after all, Yolande," he said, with 
 a sigh, " earth will have her day with us, and 
 when it's over you will have passed beyond 
 my reach. Let us not speak of it !" 
 
 But she persisted. "You said just now 
 that this day had seemed to you not like a 
 day of earth, beloved !" 
 
 This speech he scarce knew why singu- 
 larly moved him. That u beloved," spoken as 
 she spoke it, had brought a breath of balm 
 from the forbidden Paradise ; and the inti- 
 mation of the preceding words was strange. 
 Why did she argue thus? It hardly accord- 
 
192 
 
 ed with the philosophic friendliness he had 
 offered, and she had seemed tacitly to accept. 
 
 "There are, no doubt, moments and hours 
 when earth fades and something better 
 seems to brighten out," said he ; " but, as you 
 see, the mists close round us again. God, 
 had He chosen, could as well have matched 
 our bodies as our souls ; but since He has not 
 done both, I must suppose He has done 
 neither. He will care for you better than I 
 could. Amen !" 
 
 "Ah, but we love each other we love 
 each other !" she cried out, with a kind of 
 heavenly triumph. " Love is stronger than 
 earth he is a spirit! Tell me, beloved, is 
 it not me and not my body that you love? 
 Yes, I know it, for have you not loved me 
 to-day? And if you saw me not through 
 that veil, but as I am, and heard me say I 
 love you, and saw me alive in a world more 
 beautiful than that valley where first we met, 
 and knew I was waiting for you in this glo- 
 rious world in a house built for us by our 
 
193 
 
 love, and yet that I should be always near 
 you, both when the eyes of your own spirit 
 were open and when they were closed, 
 nearer than on earth I could ever have 
 come, and safe from all perils of my own 
 ignorance or your noble misgivings, so that 
 our union even while you stayed here would 
 grow each hour more entire, and at last, 
 when time had dissolved the final barrier, 
 perfect, like the marriage of fire with light 
 if God granted to us to know all this as 
 of our own knowledge, would you not be 
 content ? Oh, my beloved, would you not 
 rejoice and thank Him, and understand that 
 in seeming to part us He had in truth made 
 our parting impossible ? Beloved, would you 
 grieve to lose a shadow, gaining this reality? 
 Would you grieve because the waves must 
 wash away the print of my foot on the sands, 
 when you held to your heart me myself? 
 You have seen me this day ; I am alive for- 
 ever, and I am yours ; but, dearest husband 
 that is to be, that shadow of me that foot- 
 
194 
 
 print be glad with me that I have left it 
 behind me, and am where no waves of time 
 can change me. Be happy, as I am, that I 
 am no longer in the distance somewhere out- 
 side you, far or near, but in your heart of 
 hearts in the heaven that our two immor- 
 tal hearts have made !" 
 
 Her voice, welling forth from a region in- 
 terior to mortal sense, softened into silence. 
 He knew the truth at last. 
 
 He slowly lifted his arms, and there broke 
 from him a great and solemn cry a cry of 
 anguish, of love, of awe, of fearful joy: " Yo- 
 lande Yolande Yolande ! God, my God ! 
 Oh, my love, my love !" 
 
 It rose, that mortal cry, and sank again 
 into the depths of the ravine on whose brink 
 he hung. There was nothing mortal to hear 
 it, except Cusha, who started and stirred 
 restlessly beneath him, setting forward and 
 back her slender ears. The ghostly mists 
 stole round him, making phantasmal the 
 world from which the soul of his soul was 
 
195 
 
 gone. From below came the muffled roar- 
 ing of a mountain stream. It was the same 
 in which, three days before, he had thought 
 to end his own earthly journey. And here, 
 indeed, in one sense, it might be said to end. 
 For although, during yet many years, he 
 would be seen living as a man among men, 
 doing well what came to him to do re- 
 marked, moreover, as one of unusual seren- 
 ity and quiet kindliness yet on the banks 
 of this wild river he met the only end to 
 which the progress of an immortal soul is 
 subject recognition of the infinity within 
 his finiteness. To such a one the world 
 becomes thenceforth a contemplation rather 
 than a struggle, and years do not seem long, 
 filled as they are with the secret music of 
 eternity. 
 
 Meanwhile Strathspey sat silent and in- 
 active, save that now and then he would 
 lean forward to pat Cusha's neck. The man 
 in that hour found support in the simple an- 
 imal's companionship. Without it, the first 
 
196 
 
 sense of loneliness might have been too 
 heavy. 
 
 All day he had been led by a spirit! 
 From the moment when his life had been 
 saved from the falling tree until they halted 
 on the brink of the ravine he had dwelt as 
 a spirit among spiritual things. For that 
 world, though unperceived, abides always 
 not elsewhere than where we are. To us 
 at all times, have we but eyes to see, may 
 be visible, as to the young man who was 
 with Elisha, the mountain and the chariots 
 of fire. 
 
 She had taken him with her to her own 
 home and country, which were also to be 
 his. And verily his heart had burned with- 
 in him on the way, as of old did the hearts 
 of those who, going to Emmaus, were joined 
 by One that discoursed with them concern- 
 ing the Scriptures, revealing the spirit with- 
 in the letter. And he too had rejoiced in 
 the revelation, and had faith in the truth of 
 the things he had seen and heard. They 
 
197 
 
 were spirit and life, whereof the things of 
 this world are but shadows. 
 
 And where was Yolande? She was in her 
 home and his, safe from harm, disenchant- 
 ment, and vicissitude, awaiting his coming 
 and preparing for it. But her shadow that 
 must pass away the print of her foot that 
 must be washed out where was that ? Was 
 it by chance that he had been guided to this 
 spot, and left there ? 
 
 He roused himself: his face flushed as 
 the conviction dawned in his mind that 
 upon him had been laid a sad and holy 
 office. Upon whom else should it be laid? 
 His gaze expanded, and he seemed to see 
 in fleeting vision the maidenly figure on her 
 horse galloping on the road to the moun- 
 tain, ignorant of the peril of the rotten 
 bridge, intent only upon the joyful surprise 
 she would give her lover. Upon that bridge, 
 tottering to its fall, what messenger of di- 
 vine love veiled in mystery had met and 
 stopped her in the narrow path ! Yet no, 
 
198 
 
 she was not stopped, for her love, overpow- 
 ering death, had, with the divine permis- 
 sion, prevailed to bear her on. But some- 
 thing of hers she had left behind on the 
 way: and that sacred relic he was now to 
 recover. He drew a long, tremulous breath; 
 he spoke to Cusha ; and she, sure-footed and 
 heedful, began to descend the steep decliv- 
 ity by a rocky track, weaving to and fro 
 amidst the thick-growing shrubbery. 
 
 Slowly during some hours past the waters 
 had been subsiding. As they did so, many 
 of the objects which they were carrying 
 downward were left upon the banks. At 
 a certain point in its course the stream 
 makes a sudden bend, to pass round the 
 base of a tall, conical mass of white lime- 
 stone, which rises like a monument above 
 the dark surrounding foliage. But its lower 
 parts are softened by green mosses and the 
 delicate tracery of ferns. At its foot there 
 is a little area of pure white sand, overhung 
 by broad leaves and bordered with quaint 
 
199 
 
 flowers. High on each side, shutting out 
 the world, rise the steep, tree-clad walls of 
 the cafton. To the left, two paces away, 
 rushes headlong down the tumultuous tor- 
 rent. It is a lovely spot, and the voices of 
 solitude-loving birds are often heard there, 
 embroidering a bright pattern, as it were, 
 upon the mellow monotone of the rapids. 
 And here a man, weary of the world, yet 
 not hating it, might choose to sit for an 
 hour, sheltered from the tropic sun, refresh- 
 ed by the moist air, and pleased with the 
 contrast between the foaming rush of the 
 waters and the serene immobility of the tall 
 rock and the dewy ferns and flowers. 
 
 Strathspey, having reached the bottom 
 of the ravine, had dismounted, and, tether- 
 ing Cusha to a bough, had crept on along 
 the margin of the stream. Sometimes he 
 sprang lightly from one bowlder to another; 
 sometimes he swung himself across a gully 
 by the aid of a drooping liana ; sometimes 
 he clung to the overhanging banks by means 
 
200 
 
 of the crooked roots which thrust them- 
 selves forth from the loam. He made his 
 way steadily and without pause, as one who 
 knows the spot to which he is bound. 
 
 He saw, first, the pointed spire of the 
 white rock ; but he was quite close to it 
 before he came in sight of the little beach 
 at its foot. He looked, and uttered a low 
 and tender exclamation, not of surprise, not 
 of horror, in which loving reverence almost 
 dominated grief. He drew near gently, as 
 if he feared to disturb the slumber of one 
 who, in that quiet and beautiful nook, had 
 dropped unawares asleep. Having reached 
 the little white strand, he pulled off his cap 
 and knelt down. It was a fitting place for 
 prayer. 
 
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