arms
of God.

So Narcissus prayed and sang his love in terms of an alien creed. He
sang of the love of Christ, he thought but of the love of Alice; and
still he refrained from plucking that wonderful passion-flower of her
glance.

At length he had waited the whole service through; and, with the last
hallowed vibrations of the benediction, he turned his eyes, brimful of
love-light, greedily, eagerly, fearful lest one single ray should be
wasted on intermediate and irrelevant worshippers.

Wonderful eyes of love!--but alas! where is their Alice? Wildly they
glance along the rosy ranks of chubby girlhood, but where is their
Alice?

And then the ranks form in line, and once more the sound, the ecstatic
sound it had seemed but a short time before, of girls marching--but
no!--no!--there is no Alice.

In sick despair Narcissus stalked that Amazonian battalion, crouching
behind hedges, dropping into by-lanes, lurking in coppices,--he held his
breath as they passed two and two within a yard of him. Two followed
two, but still no Alice!

Narcissus lay in wait, dinnerless, all that afternoon; he walked about
that dreary house like a patrol, till at last he was observed of the
inmates, and knots of girls gathered at the windows--alas! only to
giggle at his forlorn and desperate appearance.

Still there was no Alice ... and then it began to rain, and he became
aware how hungry he was. So he returned to his inn with a sad heart.

And all the time poor little Alice lay in bed with a sore throat,
oblivious of those passionate boyish eyes that, you would have thought,
must have pierced the very walls of her seclusion.

And, after all, it was not her voice Narcissus had heard in the church.
It was but the still sweeter voice of his own heart.

CHAPTER VI

THE SIBYLLINE BOOKS

I hope it will be allowed to me that I treat the Reader with all
respectful courtesy, and that I am well bred enough to assume him
familiar with all manner of exquisite experience, though in my heart I
may be no less convinced that he has probably gone through life with
nothing worth calling experience whatsoever. It is our jaunty modern
fashion, and I follow it so far as I am able. I take for granted, for
instance, that every man has at one time or another--in his salad days,
you know, before he was embarked in his particular provision
business--had foolish yearnings towards poesy. I respect the mythical
dreams of his 'young days'; I assum