sly out of shadows, as the eyes of a cat glitter at night.

Inarticulate, enchanting whispers of the love and joy which have been in
the world and may be again floated up to Vanno's imagination like the
chanting of mermaids heard under the sea. He felt that, if he should
meet his Giulietta now, he would believe in her, and his belief would
make her worthy of itself, if she were not already worthy. "May the
wings of our souls never fail us," he said aloud, as if it were a
prayer.

Almost before the time when Vanno Della Robbia had known words enough
to clothe his most childish thoughts, he had possessed an unknown land,
a kingdom and a castle of his own more beautiful than sunset clouds. To
this land he always travelled when he was alone, and often at night in
dreams. It had been around him in the desert where his errand had been
to study the eastern stars; and the observatory at Monte Della Robbia,
built with money left him by his mother, was one gateway to that land.
When he was in this secret kingdom he was brother to the stars. All
knowledge came echoing through his soul, as if whispered to him by past
selves, other incarnations of himself, who had gleaned it in their
lives, from days when the world was young. He had a thousand souls,
which had known great sorrows and joys and adventures. His blood seemed
to smoke gold, like spray on rushing surf in sunshine. Never had he
admitted any one he had known (except the people his own mind created
for inhabitants of that kingdom) into his land; but now the girl whose
name he scarcely knew stood at the door of the castle, asking to come
in, saying with her eyes, which he had likened to stars, that she was
the princess who had a right to live there. Hers was the face of his
dream. She was the song of the mermaids. The voice he had heard--would
always hear in the sea--spoke of her. She was the light of the morning.
Hers the face in the sunrise, and the twilight. If he lost her, still
her spirit would haunt him, in music, in all beauty, for she was the one
woman, the ideal which is the heart of a man's heart. She must be
worthy, because there was no other princess for this kingdom of his,
east of the sun and west of the moon; and without her the rooms of the
castle would hold only echoes.

Vanno would have died rather than speak out such thoughts to any one on
earth, for they were the property of that self which his brother Angelo
said was at war with the other self, the self