in a lifetime does a man succumb after this fashion. To
many, indeed, no such fortune--call it good or ill--will ever come,
since the majority of men flirt or marry, indulge in "platonic
friendships," or in a consistent course of admiration of their
neighbours' wives, as fate or fancy leads them, and wear their time
away without ever having known the meaning of such love as this. There
is no fixed rule about it; the most unlikely, even the more sordid and
contemptible of mankind, are liable to become the subjects of an
enduring passion; only then it raises them; for though strong
affection, especially, if unrequited, sometimes wears and enervates
the mind, its influence is, in the main, undoubtedly ennobling. But,
though such affection is bounded by no rule, it is curious to observe
how generally true are the old sayings which declare that a man's
thoughts return to his first real love, as naturally and unconsciously
as the needle, that has for a while been drawn aside by some
overmastering influence, returns to its magnetic pole. The needle has
wavered, but it has never shaken off its allegiance; that would be
against nature, and is therefore impossible; and so it is with the
heart. It is the eves that he loved as a lad which he sees through the
gathering darkness of his death-bed; it is a chance but that he will
always adore the star which first came to share his loneliness in this
shadowed world above all the shining multitudes in heaven.

And, though it is not every watcher who will find it, early or late,
that star may rise for him, as it did for Arthur now. A man may meet a
face which it is quite beyond his power to forget, and be touched of
lips that print their kiss upon his very heart. Yes, the star may
rise, to pursue its course, perhaps beyond the ken of his horizon, or
only to set again before he has learnt to understand its beauty--
rarely, very rarely, to shed its perfect light upon him for all his
time of watching. The star may rise and set; the sweet lips whose
touch still thrills him after so many years may lie to-day

"Beyond the graveyard's barren wall,"

or, worse still, have since been sold to some richer owner. But if
once it has risen, if once those lips have met, the memory _must_
remain; the Soul knows no forgetfulness, and, the little thread of
life spun out, will it not claim its own? For the compact that it has
sealed is holy among holy things; that love which it has giv