and
human delight, her soul passed, till the room felt as though flooded
with the warmth of the sun. And he, too, sang with all his might some
joyful and brave utterances, with the lusty pride of manhood; and in a
gentler love-song too, that seemed to linger in a dream of delight by
crystal streams, the sweet passion of the heart rose clear and true.
But when he too essayed a song of sorrow and reluctant sadness, there
was no spirit in it; it seemed to him, I suppose, so unlike life, and
the joy of life,--so fantastic and unreal an outpouring of the heart.

We sat long in the panelled room, till it seemed all alive with soft
dreams and radiant shapes, that floated in a golden air. All that was
dark and difficult seemed cast out and exercised. But it was all so
sincere and contented a peace that the darker and more sombre shadows
had no jealous awakening; for the two were living to each other, not in
a selfish seclusion, but as though they gave of their joy in handfuls
to the whole world. The raptures of lovers sometimes take them back so
far into a kind of unashamed childishness that the spectacle rouses the
contempt and even the indignation of world-worn and cynical people.
But here it never deviated from dignity and seemliness; it only seemed
new and true, and the best gift of God. These two spirits seemed, with
hands intertwined, to have ascended gladly into the mountain, and to
have seen a transfiguration of life: which left them not in a blissful
eminence of isolation, but rather, as it were, beckoning others
upwards, and saying that the road was indeed easy and plain. And so
the sweet hour passed, and left a fragrance behind it; whatever might
befall, they had tasted of the holy wine of joy; they had blessed the
cup, and bidden us too to set our lips to it.

XV

A Strange Gathering

I was walking one summer day in the pleasant hilly country near my
home. There is a road which I often traverse, partly because it is a
very lonely one, partly because it leads out on a high brow or shoulder
of the uplands, and commands a wide view of the plain. Moreover, the
road is so deeply sunken between steep banks, overgrown with hazels,
that one is hardly aware how much one climbs, and the wide clear view
at the top always breaks upon the eye with a certain shock of agreeable
surprise. A little before the top of the hill a road turns off,
leading into a long disused quarry, surrounded by miniature cliffs,
fu