ar maiden,
Whose beauty divine
Stilled with great quiet
This wild heart of mine;
And awed and astonished
To peacefulness sweet,
The fierce mountain-torrent
Lay still at her feet."

"A right rare power for beauty to possess!" laughed Haguna. "Are you so
restless that you need this soothing, fair Sir?"

A deep, sweet smile gushed out from his eyes and illumined his face.
He stretched out his arms lovingly into the warm air, as if he thus
infolded some rich joy, and answered, musingly,--

"In ordinary action, thought, and feeling,--we are too conscious of
ourselves, we are perplexed with the miserable little 'I,' that, by
claiming deed and thought for its own work, makes it little and mean.
But the wondrous Beautiful comes to us entirely from outside; our very
contemplation of it does not belong to us; we are overpowered
and conquered by the vast idea that broods over us. And so that
contemplation is pure happiness."

Haguna laughed a little, and a little wondered what he meant; then
observed, lightly,--

"You must value yourself very modestly, to consider your greatest
happiness to consist in losing your self-consciousness,--unless,
indeed, like Polycrates, you hope to insure future prosperity by
sacrificing your most valuable possession."

"If so, I, like Polycrates, am the gainer by my own precaution; for, in
your presence, dear lady, do I first truly find my right consciousness."

She clapped her hands gleefully, wilfully misunderstanding his meaning.

"Most complimentary of monarchs! So I am the haggard old fisherman who
replaced the lost bawble in the royal treasury! Pray, Sire, remember the
pension with which I should be rewarded!" And she bowed low, in mock
courtesy to her companion.

"Nay," rejoined Anthrops, vexed that his earnest compliment should be so
mishandled,--"blame your own perversity for such an interpretation. At
your side I forget that I live for any other purpose than to look at
you, and lavish my whole soul in an intensity of gazing; and then the
presumptuous thought, that you like to have me near you, nay, are
sometimes even pleased to talk to me, gives my poor self a value in my
own eyes, for the kindness you show me."

"I know all that well enough," said Haguna, quietly. "But in the mean
while, dear Anthrops, you must remember that it is really impolite to
stare so much."

By this time they had ridden deep into the still woods. Following the
light current o