dvancing moon, who slips the silver train of cloud from her
shoulders, and, with her foot upon the pine-tops, surveys heaven.

"Lucy, did you never dream of meeting me?"

"O Richard! yes; for I remembered you."

"Lucy! and did you pray that we might meet?"

"I did!"

Young as when she looked upon the lovers in Paradise, the fair Immortal
journeys onward. Fronting her, it is not night but veiled day. Full half
the sky is flushed. Not darkness, not day, but the nuptials of the two.

"My own! my own for ever! You are pledged to me? Whisper!"

He hears the delicious music.

"And you are mine?"

A soft beam travels to the fern-covert under the pinewood where they sit,
and for answer he has her eyes turned to him an instant, timidly
fluttering over the depths of his, and then downcast; for through her
eyes her soul is naked to him.

"Lucy! my bride! my life!"

The night-jar spins his dark monotony on the branch of the pine. The soft
beam travels round them, and listens to their hearts. Their lips are
locked.

Pipe no more, Love, for a time! Pipe as you will you cannot express their
first kiss; nothing of its sweetness, and of the sacredness of it
nothing. St. Cecilia up aloft, before the silver organ-pipes of Paradise,
pressing fingers upon all the notes of which Love is but one, from her
you may hear it.

So Love is silent. Out in the world there, on the skirts of the woodland,
the self-satisfied sheep-boy delivers a last complacent squint down the
length of his penny-whistle, and, with a flourish correspondingly awry,
he also marches into silence, hailed by supper. The woods are still.
There is heard but the night-jar spinning on the pine-branch, circled by
moonlight.

CHAPTER XX

Enchanted Islands have not yet rooted out their old brood of dragons.
Wherever there is romance, these monsters come by inimical attraction.
Because the heavens are certainly propitious to true lovers, the beasts
of the abysses are banded to destroy them, stimulated by innumerable sad
victories; and every love-tale is an Epic Par of the upper and lower
powers. I wish good fairies were a little more active. They seem to be
cajoled into security by the happiness of their favourites; whereas the
wicked are always alert, and circumspect. They let the little ones shut
their eyes to fancy they are not seen, and then commence.

These appointments and meetings, involving a start from the dinner-table
at the hour of contemplative