afterwards, one of the gods, who would not look at her because
she had given herself to a mortal. A woman then has a fire here"--she
clasped her hands to her bosom--"and wishes she could burn away to
nothing, nothing, just to air, and become invisible."

She was rising hurriedly on the last word, but I brought my hands down
on her shoulders.

"Carlotta, my child," said I, "what do you mean?"

She seized my wrists and struggling to rise, panted out in desperation:

"You are one of the gods, and I wish I were changed into an invisible
star."

"I don't," said I, huskily.

By main force I drew her to me and our lips met. She yielded, and this
time the whole soul of Carlotta came to me in the kiss.

"It's beautiful to snuggle up against you again," said my ever direct
Carlotta, after a while. "I haven't done it--oh, for such a long time."
She sighed contentedly. "Seer Marcous--"

"You must call me Marcus now," said I, somewhat fatuously.

She shook her head as it lay on my shoulder. "No. You are Marcus--or Sir
Marcus--to everybody. To me you are always Seer Marcous. Seer Marcous,
darling," she half whispered after a pause. "Once I did not know the
difference between a god and a mortal. It was only that morning when I
woke up--"

"You took me for a saint in a dressing-gown," said I.

"It's the same thing," she retorted. And then taking up her parable,
she told me in her artless way the inner history of her heart since that
morning; but what she said is sacred. Also, a man feels himself to be a
pitiful dog of a god when a woman relates how she came to establish him
on her High Altar.

Later we struck a lighter vein and spoke of the present, the enchantment
of the hour, the scented air, the African stars.

"It seems, my dear," said I, "that we have got to Nephelococcygia after
all."

"What is Nephelococcygia?" asked Carlotta.

I relented. "It's a base Aristophanic libel on our dream-city," said I.

Thus out of evil has come good; out of pain has grown happiness; out of
horror has sprung an everlasting love. Many a man will say that in all
my relations with Carlotta I have comported myself as a fool, and that
my marriage is the crowning folly. Well, I pretend not unto wisdom.
Wisdom would have married me to five thousand a year, a position in
fashionable society, my Cousin Dora and premature old age antecedent to
eternal destruction. I hold that my salvation has lain the way of folly.
Again, it may be urge