major?"

"Yes." Then said I, looking at her, "How far do you think pity could
lead one, Vesty--you, so pitiful and kind? Do you think that it could
even lead you--to marry me? To take little Gurd and go away with
me--and help me to live--for pity?"

"No! oh, no!" she gasped.

"Then," said I, grasping hard on my cane with my feeble hand, "as God
wills!"

"Because," said Vesty, "I'm not so unselfish as that. I can't marry
you for that reason--because--I love you!"

The red of the Basin sunset, that would be by and by unsurpassed,
glowed in her cheeks.

As for me--forever a Basin--I dashed my hand across my eyes. A Voice
above land and sea rolled toward me in that moment, through her voice,
in gathering waves that covered all the pitiful accident and despair of
a maimed, halting, birth-marked universe:

"And the crooked places shall be made straight; and the rough places
plain. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart."

XXVI

JUST THE SCHOOL-HOUSE

Waves, slowly, softly breaking, not on the Basin shore: though ever, in
remotest lands, we dream of that.

We hold it mystic more and more, for love of it!--ay, we have it
mingled in our thoughts with that one safe and sweet possession, the
Land unspoken, the Basin whose colors dawn at eventide!

And we never count: "Such an one was lost," and, "Such an one was
living, when we knew." For there, there are none lost. They live
again!

I suggested once that we should build a house fitting those grand
sea-cliffs, sometimes to occupy it.

But Vesty, ever wise, was silent, troubled, and I read her thought.

No, we should introduce no discordant element there, of liveries and
servants, and riches and seclusive walls, of _mine_ and _thine_.

"Mine _is_ thine if thou needest it," was ever the Basin code: "even my
life!" Before such a spirit the admission of worldly wealth and rank
were tawdry.

But Vesty communicates with them (dear to me when they arrive are the
stamps unutterably erased by Lunette's faithful art): and we know that
they are happier for us, and by us comforted.

And do I never blush for Vesty in her new position? Ay, a thousand
times, for pride and joy! Her manners are from a high source indeed;
you will not find me any that are higher.

Full are her hands of charity and mercy, given, as the great Founder of
our nobilities gave, without stooping, of condescension. Saint Vesta!
who gives a glory to my name it never had before--