d which could never altogether pass away.

* * * * *

... A woman read it, seated on a shelving slant of moorland with the
blue sky overhead, and the soft murmur of the sea in her ears, and
the sunlight streaming around her. When she had finished, and the
letter had fallen to her side, crushed into a shapeless mass, the
light had died out of the sky and the air, and the song of the birds
had changed into a wail. And this was what the man had said to the
woman:--

"Berenice, I have had a dream! I dreamed that I was coming
to you, that you and I were together somewhere in a new
world, where the men were gods and the women were saints,
where the sun always shone, and nothing that was not pure
and beautiful had any place! And now I am awake, and I know
that there is no such world.

"You and I are standing on opposite sides of a deep, dark
precipice. I may not come to you! You must not come to me.

"I have thought over this matter with all the seriousness
which befits it. You will never know how great and how
fierce the struggle has been. I am feeling an older and a
tired man. But now that is all over! I have crossed the
Rubicon! The mists have rolled away, and the truth is very
clear indeed to me! I shudder when I think to what misery I
might have brought you, if I had yielded to that sweetest
and most fascinating impulse of my life, which bade me
accept your sacrifice and come to you. Berenice, you are
very young yet, and you have woven some new and very
beautiful fancies which you have put into a book, and which
the world has found amusing! To you alone they have become
the essence of your life: they have become by constant
contemplation a part of yourself. Out of the greatness of
your heart you do not fear to put them into practice! But,
dear, you must find a new world to fit your fancies, for the
one in which we are forced to dwell, the world which, in
theory, finds them delightful, would find another and an
uglier world if we should venture upon their embodiment!
After all we are creatures of this world, and by this
world's laws we shall be judged. The things which are right
are right, and the things which are pure are pure. Love is
the greatest power in the world, but it cannot alter things
which are unalterable.

"