lt of Sylvia, "that is but small
consolation for having lost it now, though I suppose our lot is not so
hard as if we were never to see it again. In that moon's face I find
the realization of my fancied ideal woman; while that sad one yonder
seems as though some celestial lover, in search of his fate, had become
enamoured of her, and tried in vain to win her, and the grief in his
mind had impressed itself on the then molten face of a satellite to be
the monument throughout eternity of love and a broken heart. If the
spirits and souls of the departed have any command of matter, why may
not their intensest thoughts engrave themselves on a moon that, when
dead and frozen, may reflect and shine as they did, while immersed in
the depths of space? At first Dione bored me; now I should greatly
like to see her again."

"History repeats itself," replied Cortlandt, "and the same phases of
life recur. It is we that are in a changed receptive mood. The change
that seems to be in them is in reality in us. Remain as you are now,
and Dione will give you the same pleasure tomorrow that she gave
to-day."

To Ayrault this meant more than the mere setting to rise again of a
heavenly body. The perfume of a flower, the sighing of the wind,
suggesting some harmony or song, a full or crescent moon, recalled
thoughts and associations of Sylvia. Everything seemed to bring out
memory, and he realized the utter inability of absence to cure the
heart of love. "If Sylvia should pass from my life as that moon has
left my vision," his thoughts continued, "existence would be but
sadness and memory would be its cause, for the most beautiful sounds
entail sorrow; the most beautiful sights, intense pain. Ah," he went
on with a trace of bitterness, while his friends fell asleep in the
cave, "I might better have remained in love with science; for whose
studies Nature, which is but a form of God, in the right spirit, is not
dependent for his joy or despair on the whims of a girl. She, of
course, sees many others, and, being only twenty, may forget me. Must
I content myself with philosophical rules and mathematical formulae,
when she, whose changefulness I may find greater than the winds that
sigh over me, now loves me no longer? O love, which makes us miserable
when we feel it, and more miserable still when it is gone!"

He strung a number of copper wires at different degrees of tension
between two trees, and listened to the wind as it rang