onfirm her purpose, to fix her life in a self-
devotedness already fixed beyond all relaxing and all change. With his
death, indeed, the last faint hope fades utterly away that his great
purpose shall be achieved; and she thenceforth is

"But as the funeral urn that bears
The ashes of a leader."

But necessity lies only the more upon her--that most imperious of all
necessities which originates in her own innate nobleness--that she should
be _true_. When first she accepted this burden of her nobleness and her
sorrow, she had said--

"I will not count
On aught but being faithful;"

and faithfulness without hope--truthfulness without prospect, almost
without possibility, of tangible fulfilment--is all that lies before her
now. She accepts it in a mournful stillness, not of despair, and not of
resignation, but simply as the only true accomplishment of her life that
now remains.

The last interview with Don Silva almost oppresses us with its deep
severe solemnity. No bitterness of separation broods over it: the true
bitterness of separation fell upon her when her lover became false to
himself in the vain imagination that, so doing, he could by any
possibility be fully true to her. "Our marriage rite"--thus she
addresses the repentant and returning renegade--

"Our marriage rite
Is our resolve that we will each be true
To high allegiance, higher than our love;"

and it is thus she answers for herself, and teaches him to answer, that
question asked in the fullest and fairest flush of her love's joys and
hopes--

"But is it what we love, or how we love,
That makes true good?"

The tremulous sensitiveness of her former life has now passed beyond all
outward manifestation, lost in absorbing self-devotedness and absorbing
sorrow; and every thought, feeling, and word is characterised by an
ineffable depth of calm.

Those closing lines, whose still, deep, melancholy cadence lingers upon
ear and heart as do the concluding lines of 'Paradise Lost'--

"Straining he gazed, and knew not if he gazed
On aught but blackness overhung with stars"--

tell us how Fedalma passes away from the sight, the life, and all but the
heart of Don Silva. Not thus does she pass away from our gaze. One star
overhanging the blackness, clear and calm beyond all material brightness
of earth and firmament, for us marks out her course: the star of
unwavering faith, unfaltering truth,