-gods like myself. I adjured them to build up the fires of welcome
until the island might seem a mountain of flame. Their strongest men
must feed, as never fires had before been fed, and all others must go to
their huts and await the morrow.

Alone on my plateau I saw the fires leap up in a coast-wise line of
beacons that dyed the night vermilion. The tiny point of seaward green
was crawling snail-like on the sea and at last my gaze was rewarded by a
slender flowering spray of rocket fire, followed by another and
another. Then the point of light ceased crawling and stood still. I let
my head fall forward in my palms and my breath came in spasmodic gasps.

But as I raised my eyes they fell on the smiling lips of the portrait.
It seemed to me that Her lips and eyes, still gracious, even
congratulatory, held a touch of wistful sadness which had not been there
before. They seemed such lips and eyes as say, "_Bon voyage_ and
farewell."

The glow of wine-like exultation died in my arteries and a chill settled
on my heart. There, in the world of tangible things and unrelenting
facts, what room would there be for such a companionship? Was this
strongest love of my life to melt into nothing now that I no longer
needed its support? Was it a dream? If so it was a dream from which I
should awake to an empty life. No! I would set out to find her in the
flesh. I halted my reflections with a start. And when I found her--what?
I sat there in the midst of silences, and the sweep of essential things.
About me lay leagues of sea, miles of rock, an infinity of sky. They
brooded gigantically over me and whispered that there are mysterious
influences greater than man's cold facts. Man's thought became only a
fluttering stir in a center of protoplasm. I was as near to the
beginnings of things as to the present. It was as easy to believe in the
love of souls that had not met as in other matters.

"No--no!" I cried out, bending before the face, "Whatever it be, there
are loves great enough to burn into miracles. This is not the first time
I have loved you--nor the last. Through aeons of reincarnation a love
like this runs on." I paused awhile, then added, with an effort to
smile. "Don't you remember even one or two former lives, dear?

"'... happy we lived and happy we loved
And happy at last we died;
And deep in the rift of a Caradoc drift
We slumbered side by side.
The world turned on in the lathe of time,
The h