soft undertone;

"Great Lady, be pitiful to the blind eyes and give them light."

And instantly I knew. O blind--blind! Was the unhappy King of the story
duller of heart than I? And shame possessed me. Here was the chrysoberyl
that all day hides its secret in deeps of lucid green but when the night
comes flames with its fiery ecstasy of crimson to the moon, and I--I had
been complacently considering whether I might not blunt my own spiritual
instinct by companionship with her, while she had been my guide, as
infinitely beyond me in insight as she was in all things beautiful. I
could have kissed her feet in my deep repentance. True it is that the
gateway of the high places is reverence and he who cannot bow his head
shall receive no crown. I saw that my long travel in search of knowledge
would have been utterly vain if I had not learnt that lesson there and
then. In those moments of silence I learnt it once and for ever.

She stood by me breathing the liquid morning air, her face turned upon
the eternal snows. I caught her hand in a recognition that might
have ended years of parting, and its warm youth vibrated in mine, the
foretaste of all understanding, all unions, of love that asks nothing,
that fears nothing, that has no petition to make. She raised her eyes to
mine and her tears were a rainbow of hope. So we stood in silence that
was more than any words, and the golden moments went by. I knew her now
for what she was, one of whom it might have been written;

"I come from where night falls clearer
Than your morning sun can rise;
From an earth that to heaven draws nearer
Than your visions of Paradise,--
For the dreams that your dreamers dream
We behold them with open eyes."

With open eyes! Later I asked the nature of the strange bond that had
called her to my side.

"I do not understand that fully myself," she said--"That is part of the
knowledge we must wait for. But you have the eyes that see, and that is
a tie nothing can break. I had waited long in the House of Beauty for
you. I guided you there. But between you and me there is also love."

I stretched an eager hand but she repelled it gently, drawing back a
little. "Not love of each other though we are friends and in the future
may be infinitely more. But--have you ever seen a drawing of Blake's--a
young man stretching his arms to a white swan which flies from him on
wings he cannot stay? That is the story of both our lives. We long to