ere no light of day can ever shine, and
who at last is allowed to look at the blue heavens, at the splendor of
the sun, at the myriad flowers and leaves in the green woods, and on the
meadows.

She was wretched, and yet a happy woman.

"That is love!" were the words that her heart sang in triumph, and as
her memory looked back on the admirers who had approached her in Arelas
when she was still little more than a child, and afterwards in Rome,
with tender words and looks, they all appeared like phantom forms
carrying feeble tapers, whose light paled pitifully, for Polykarp had
now come on the scene, bearing the very sun itself in his hands.

"They--and he," she murmured to herself, and she beheld as it were a
balance, and on one of the scales lay the homage which in her vain fancy
she had so coveted. It was of no more weight than chaff, and its whole
mass was like a heap of straw, which flew up as soon as Polykarp laid
his love--a hundredweight of pure gold, in the other scale.

"And if all the nations and kings of the earth brought their treasures
together," thought she, "and laid them at my feet, they could not make
me as rich as he has made me, and if all the stars were fused into
one, the vast globe of light which they would form could not shine so
brightly as the joy that fills my soul. Come now what may, I will never
complain after that hour of delight."

Then she thought over each of her former meetings with Polykarp, and
remembered that he had never spoken to her of love. What must it not
have cost him to control himself thus; and a great triumphant joy filled
her heart at the thought that she was pure, and not unworthy of him, and
an unutterable sense of gratitude rose up in her soul. The love she bore
this man seemed to take wings, and it spread itself over the common life
and aspect of the world, and rose to a spirit of devotion. With a deep
sigh she raised her eyes and hands to heaven, and in her longing to
prove her love to every living being, nay to every created thing, her
spirit sought the mighty and beneficent Power to whom she owed such
exalted happiness.

In her youth her father had kept her very strictly, but still he
had allowed her to go through the streets of the town with her young
companions, wreathed with flowers, and all dressed in their best, in the
procession of maidens at the feast of Venus of Arelas, to whom all the
women of her native town were wont to turn with prayers and sacrifice