a
search. He was like the neophyte of some veiled religion, who, after
long years of arduous labour and painful preparation, is at length
conducted to the doors of its holy of holies, and left to enter there
alone. What will he find beyond them? The secret he longed to learn,
the seal and confirmation of his hard-won faith, or empty, baulking
nothingness? Would the goddess herself, the unveiled Isis, wait to bless
her votary within those doors? Or would that hall be tenanted but by a
painted and bedizened idol, a thing fine with ivory and gold, but dead
and soulless?

Might it not be better indeed to turn back while there was yet time,
to be content to dwell on in the wide outer courts of the imagination,
where faith is always possible, rather than to hazard all? No; it would,
Morris felt, be best to learn the whole truth, especially as he was sure
that it could not prove other than satisfying and beautiful. Blind must
he have been indeed, and utterly without intuition if with every veil
that was withdrawn from it the soul of Stella did not shine more bright.

Another question remained. Was it well that he should read these
diaries? Was not his mind already full enough of Stella? If once he
began to read, might it not be overladen? In short, Mary had dealt well
by him; when those books were open in his hand, would he be dealing well
by Mary? Answers--excellent answers--to these queries sprang up in his
mind by dozens.

Stella was dead. "But you are sworn to her in death," commented the
voice of Conscience. "Would you rob the living of your allegiance before
the time?"

There was no possible harm in reading the records of the life and
thoughts of a friend, or even of a love departed. "Yet," suggested the
voice of Conscience, "are you so sure that this life _is_ departed? Have
you not at whiles felt its presence, that mysterious presence of the
dead, so sweet, so heavy, and so unmistakable, with which at some time
or other in their lives many have made acquaintance? Will not the study
of this life cause that life to draw near? the absorption of those
thoughts bring about the visits of other and greater thoughts, whereof
they may have been, as it were, the seed?"

Anyone who knew its author would be interested to read this human
document, the product of an intelligence singularly bright and clear;
of a vision whose point of outlook was one of the highest and most
spiritual peaks in the range of our human imaginings.