irds of paradise which ever flew in fabled
tropic seas.

"I reply that I am content to wait till upon some glorious morning
my ship breaks into the silence of those seas, and, watching from her
battered bulwarks, I behold the islands of the Blest and catch the
scent of heavenly flowers, and see the jewelled birds, whereof I dream
floating from palm to palm.

"'But if there are no such isles?' he would answer; 'If, with their
magic birds and flowers, they are indeed but the baseless fabric of a
dream? If your ship, amidst the ravings of the storm and the darkness of
the tortured night, should founder once and for ever in the dark strait
which leads to the gateways of that Dawn--those gateways through which
no traveller returns to lay his fellows' course for the harbours of your
perfect sea; what then?'

"Then I would say, let me forswear God Who has suffered me to be
deceived with false spirits, and sink to depths where no light breaks,
where no memories stir, where no hopes torment. Yes, then let me deny
Him and die, who am of all women the most miserable. But it is not
so, for to me a messenger has _come_; at my prayer once the Gates were
opened, and now I know quite surely that it was permitted to me to see
within them that I might find strength in this the bitter hour of my
trial.

"Yet how can I choke the truth and tread down the human heart within me?
Oh! the road which my naked feet must tread is full of thorns, and heavy
the cross that I must bear. I go now, in a few minutes' time, to bid
him farewell. If I can help it I shall never see him again. No, not
even after many years, since it is better not. Also, perhaps this is
weakness, but I should wish him to remember me wearing such beauty as
I have and still young, before time and grief and labour have marked
me with their ugly scars. It is the Stella whom he found singing at the
daybreak on the ship which brought her to him, for whom I desire that he
should seek in the hour of a different dawn.

"I go presently, to my marriage, as it were; a cold and pitiful feast,
many would think it--these nuptials of life-long renunciation. The
philosopher would say, Why renounce? You have some advantages, some
powers, use them. The man loves you, play upon his natural weakness.
Help yourself to the thing that chances to be desirable in your eyes.
Three years hence who will blame you, who will even remember? His
father? Well, he likes you already, and in time a man of t