ls us. Are they jealous of us?"

"Clearly, at all events, we are not at home amidst them--not genuinely
so," admitted the doctor.

"And yet you say we are sprung of them?" said Juliet.

"We have lifted ourselves above them," rejoined the doctor, "and must
conquer them next."

"And until we conquer them," suggested Juliet, "our lifting above them
is in vain?"

"For we return to them," assented Faber; and silence fell.--"Yes," he
resumed, "it is sad. The upper air is sweet, and the heart of man loves
the sun;--"

"Then," interrupted Juliet, "why would you have me willing to go down
to the darkness?"

"I would not have you willing. I would have you love the light as you
do. We can not but love the light, for it is good; and the sorrow that
we must leave it, and that so soon, only makes it dearer. The sense of
coming loss is, or ought to be, the strongest of all bonds between the
creatures of a day. The sweetest, saddest, most entrancing songs that
love can sing, must be but variations on this one theme.--'The morning
is clear; the dew mounts heavenward; the odor spreads; the sun looks
over the hill; the world breaks into laughter: let us love one another!
The sun grows hot, the shadow lies deep; let us sit in it, and remember;
the sea lies flashing in green, dulled with purple; the peacock spreads
his glories, a living garden of flowers; all is mute but the rush of the
stream: let us love one another! The soft evening draws nigh; the dew is
coming down again; the air is cool, dusky, and thin; it is sweeter than
the morning; other words of death gleam out of the deepening sky; the
birds close their wings and hide their heads, for death is near: let us
love one another! The night is come, and there is no morrow; it is dark;
the end is nigh; it grows cold; in the darkness and the cold we tremble,
we sink; a moment and we are no more; ah! ah, beloved! let us love, let
us cleave to one another, for we die!'"

But it seems to me, that the pitifulness with which we ought to regard
each other in the horror of being the offspring of a love we do not
love, in the danger of wandering ever, the children of light, in the
midst of darkness, immeasurably surpasses the pitifulness demanded by
the fancy that we are the creatures of but a day.

Moved in his soul by the sound of his own words, but himself the harp
upon which the fingers of a mightier Nature than he knew were playing a
prelude to a grander phantasy than he could co