ive acolytes by the altars of destiny.

As the Hardi Biaou drew near the lofty, inviolate cliffs, there opened
up sombre clefts and caverns, honeycombing the island at all points of
the compass. She slipped past rugged pinnacles, like buttresses to the
island, here trailed with vines, valanced with shrubs of unnameable
beauty, and yonder shrivelled and bare like the skin of an elephant.

Some rocks, indeed, were like vast animals round which molten granite
had been poured, preserving them eternally. The heads of great dogs,
like the dogs of Ossian, sprang out in profile from the repulsing
mainland; stupendous gargoyles grinned at them from dark points of
excoriated cliff. Farther off, the face of a battered sphinx stared with
unheeding look into the vast sea and sky beyond. From the dark depths
of mystic crypts came groanings, like the roaring of lions penned beside
the caves of martyrs.

Jean had startled Guida with his suggestions of war between England and
France. Though she longed to have Philip win glory in some great battle,
yet her first natural thought was of danger to the man she loved--and
the chance too of his not coming back to her from Portsmouth. But now
as she looked at this scene before her, there came again to her face the
old charm of blitheness. The tides of temperament in her were fast to
flow and quick to ebb. The reaction from pain was in proportion to her
splendid natural health.

Her lips smiled. For what can long depress the youthful and the loving
when they dream that they are entirely beloved? Lands and thrones
may perish, plague and devastation walk abroad with death, misery and
beggary crawl naked to the doorway, and crime cower in the hedges; but
to the egregious egotism of young love there are only two identities
bulking in the crowded universe. To these immensities all other beings
are audacious who dream of being even comfortable and obscure--happiness
would be a presumption; as though Fate intended each living human being
at some one moment to have the whole world to himself. And who shall cry
out against that egotism with which all are diseased?

So busy was Guida with her own thoughts that she scarcely noticed they
had changed their course, and were skirting the coast westerly, whereby
to reach Havre Gosselin on the other side of the island. There on the
shore above lay the seigneurie, the destination of the Hardi Biaou.

As they passed the western point of the island, and made t