reflection of our star. I saw that metaphor in some novel, and
recognize its truth. Do you, my princess?"

"I will never so utterly degrade myself. I could neither lower my
standard, nor sacrifice my ideal," said Leo, with a touch of scorn in
her usually gentle voice.

"You prefer that your ideal should sacrifice you? One enjoys for a
season the wide expanse visible from that lofty emotional pinnacle; but
the atmosphere is too rarefied, and we gladly descend to the warm,
denser air of the plains of common sense selfishness. If it be lowering
your standard to become the wife of a bishop (the youngest ever
ordained in his State), clothed with the double distilled odors of
sanctity and popularity, then heaven help your standard, which only
heaven can fitly house."

"Since you persist in assuming that so flattering an offer has been
made me, I will set this subject at rest, by a final assurance that
even were your surmise correct, I could never under any imaginable
circumstances marry my cousin, Bishop Douglass. Although I trust and
reverence him beyond all other men, 'I love my cousin cousinly, no
more,' and he is too much absorbed by his holy office and its solemn
responsibilities, to waste thought on the frail, sweet, rosy garland of
any woman's love. Fret yourself no longer in casting matrimonial
horoscopes for me."

The flushed cheeks, and a certain icy curtness in Leo's tone, warned
her companion that she was rashly invading sacred precincts.

"Eight years ago I made the solemn asseveration that I would never
marry; and I ran as a raw recruit to swell the army of foolish virgins
who lost all the wedding splendors, the hypothetical 'cakes and ale',
for want of the oil of worldly wisdom. Now I am thirty-three, and my
lamp is filled to the brim, and the bridegroom is in sight. Why not?
Adverse weather, rain, rust and mildew spoiled my beautiful golden
harvest ten years ago, but aftermath is better than bare stubble
fields, and though you miss the song of the reapers, you escape
starvation. Deny it as we may, we are hopelessly given over to
fetichism, and each one of us ties around her stone image some
beguiling orthodox label. Leo, yours is pride, masquerading in the dun
garb of 'religious duty'. Mine is self-love, pure and simple, the
worldly weal of Alma Cutting; but nominally it is dubbed 'grateful
requital of a life of devotion' in my lover! You grieve over my
heartlessness? That is the one compensation time br