er-current,--no otherwise indeed than Tristan before
the potion, when, despite the Image in his heart, he devoted thought
to his career, cherished dreams of ambition. But after the cup
Tristan and Isolde are lovers, nothing more,--or less. All the
furniture of the day which has nothing to do with their love is
therefore an impertinence, an obtrusion; all day's pageants and
activities are a vanity, and a pernicious vanity; a glaring mask
hiding from sight the only true and beautiful. Everything that
the garish daylight shows, which can never show them the depths of
the other's heart, is a false show, an ugly delusion. The night,
during which all the troublesome, battering appeals of the day
are suspended, in which everything fades from the eye, leaving
it free to fix itself upon the only reality, love,--the night is
fosterer and patroness of truth. To love the night, to yearn for
it, to wish it forever prolonged, is natural in these lovers who
have drank of the cup; and, by a natural step further, since earthly
life affords no such night, to wish for the night of death, as we
hear them presently doing, a night in which they picture themselves
eternally floating in a state of ever-renewed joy in each other,
ever fresh ardour, two and yet one. It is not in the least like
Paradise. Paradise, with its interfering light and shows and
other-souls-in-bliss, could be to them but another version of the
Day. The Paradise of their desire is an eternal twilight, and nothing
more asked for each than the heaven of the other.

Meanwhile they are talking together like commoner lovers, of the
past, of their first meeting, the beginnings of their love. How,
she asks him, very humanly, how could he do to her the thing he
did, betray her as he had done, claim her for another, give her
over to death? "It was the Day!" he explains. "The Day, shining
about me, which showed Isolde, where she stood sun-like, in the
splendour of glory and greatness, infinitely far removed. That
which so ravished my eye, weighted down my heart to the earth. How,
in the brilliant light of the Day, how could Isolde be mine?"--"Was
she not yours, whose elect you were? What falsehoods did the evil
Day tell you, that you should betray the faithful one, who had
preferred you?" The love of glory it had been, he avows, which
moved him. That sun of the Day, worldly honour, with its idle and
false rays had allured him. An Image all the while lay in the deepest
shrine of h