nto the amber
eyes, resting his cheek upon the hand that wore the red jewel.

--If it were a possible thing,--women are such strange creatures! Is
there any trick that love and their own fancies do not play them? Just
see how they marry! A woman that gets hold of a bit of manhood is like
one of those Chinese wood-carvers who work on any odd, fantastic root
that comes to hand, and, if it is only bulbous above and bifurcated
below, will always contrive to make a man--such as he is--out of it. I
should like to see any kind of a man, distinguishable from a Gorilla,
that some good and even pretty woman could not shape a husband out of.

--A child,--yes, if you choose to call her so, but such a child! Do you
know how Art brings all ages together? There is no age to the angels
and ideal human forms among which the artist lives, and he shares
their youth until his hand trembles and his eye grows dim. The youthful
painter talks of white-bearded Leonardo as if he were a brother, and
the veteran forgets that Raphael died at an age to which his own is of
patriarchal antiquity.

But why this lover of the beautiful should be so drawn to one whom
Nature has wronged so deeply seems hard to explain. Pity, I suppose.
They say that leads to love.

--I thought this matter over until I became excited and curious, and
determined to set myself more seriously at work to find out what was
going on in these wild hearts and where their passionate lives were
drifting. I say wild hearts and passionate lives, because I think I can
look through this seeming calmness of youth and this apparent feebleness
of organization, and see that Nature, whom it is very hard to cheat,
is only waiting as the sapper waits in his mine, knowing that all is in
readiness and the slow-match burning quietly down to the powder. He will
leave it by-and-by, and then it will take care of itself.

One need not wait to see the smoke coming through the roof of a house
and the flames breaking out of the windows to know that the building is
on fire. Hark! There is a quiet, steady, unobtrusive, crisp, not loud,
but very knowing little creeping crackle that is tolerably intelligible.
There is a whiff of something floating about, suggestive of toasting
shingles. Also a sharp pyroligneous-acid pungency in the air that stings
one's eyes. Let us get up and see what is going on.--Oh,--oh,--oh! do
you know what has got hold of you? It is the great red dragon that is
born of the littl