ss laid her prostrate; she contemplated the peace of
death.

Shortly before she fell sick the prince was a guest of her father's, and
had won the household by his perfect amiability as an associate. The
grace and glow, and some of the imaginable accomplishments of an Indian
Bacchus were native to him. In her convalescence, she asked herself what
more she could crave than the worship of a godlike youth, whom she in
return might cherish, strengthening his frail health with happiness. For
she had seen how suffering ate him up; he required no teaching in the
Spartan virtue of suffering, wolf-gnawed, silently. But he was a flower
in sunshine to happiness, and he looked to her for it. Why should she
withhold from him a thing so easily given? The convalescent is receptive
and undesiring, or but very faintly desiring: the new blood coming into
the frame like first dawn of light has not stirred the old passions; it
is infant nature, with a tinge of superadded knowledge that is not cloud
across it and lends it only a tender wistfulness.

Her physician sentenced her to the Alps, whither a friend, a daughter of
our island, whose acquaintance she had made in Italy, was going, and at
an invitation Clotilde accompanied her, and she breathed Alpine air.
Marko sank into the category of dreams during sickness. There came a
letter from the professor mentioning that Alvan was on one of the kingly
Alpine heights in view, and the new blood running through her veins
became a torrent. He there! So near! Could he not be reached?

He had a saying: Two wishes make a will.

The wishes of two lovers, he meant. A prettier sentence for lovers, and
one more intoxicating to them, was never devised. It chirrups of the dear
silly couple. Well, this was her wish. Was it his? Young health on the
flow of her leaping blood cried out that it could not be other than
Alvan's wish; she believed in his wishing it. Then as he wished and she
wished, she had the will immediately, and it was all the more her own for
being his as well. She hurried her friend and her friend's friends on
horseback off to the heights where the wounded eagle lodged overlooking
mountain and lake. The professor reported him outwearied with excess of
work. Alvan lived the lives of three; the sins of thirty were laid to his
charge. Do you judge of heroes as of lesser men? Her reckless defence of
him, half spoken, half in her mind, helped her to comprehend his dealings
with her, and how it