es another
passing takes it from them."

"Fame?"

He answered, "likely not. For the man I touch there is a path traced
out in the sand by a finger which no man sees. That he must follow.
Sometimes it leads almost to the top, and then turns down suddenly into
the valley. He must follow it, though none else sees the tracing."

"Love?"

He said, "He shall hunger for it--but he shall not find it. When he
stretches out his arms to it, and would lay his heart against a thing
he loves, then, far off along the horizon he shall see a light play.
He must go towards it. The thing he loves will not journey with him;
he must travel alone. When he presses somewhat to his burning heart,
crying, 'Mine, mine, my own!' he shall hear a voice--'Renounce!
renounce! this is not thine!'"

"He shall succeed?"

He said, "He shall fail. When he runs with others they shall reach the
goal before him. For strange voices shall call to him and strange lights
shall beckon him, and he must wait and listen. And this shall be the
strangest: far off across the burning sands where, to other men, there
is only the desert's waste, he shall see a blue sea! On that sea the sun
shines always, and the water is blue as burning amethyst, and the foam
is white on the shore. A great land rises from it, and he shall see upon
the mountain-tops burning gold."

The mother said, "He shall reach it?"

And he smiled curiously.

She said, "It is real?"

And he said, "What IS real?"

And she looked up between his half-closed eyelids, and said, "Touch."

And he leaned forward and laid his hand upon the sleeper, and whispered
to it, smiling; and this only she heard--"This shall be thy reward--that
the ideal shall be real to thee."

And the child trembled; but the mother slept on heavily and her
brain-picture vanished. But deep within her the antenatal thing that
lay here had a dream. In those eyes that had never seen the day, in that
half-shaped brain was a sensation of light! Light--that it never had
seen. Light--that perhaps it never should see. Light--that existed
somewhere!

And already it had its reward: the Ideal was real to it.

London.

VII. IN A RUINED CHAPEL.

"I cannot forgive--I love."

There are four bare walls; there is a Christ upon the walls, in red,
carrying his cross; there is a Blessed Bambino with the face rubbed out;
there is Madonna in blue and red; there are Roman soldiers and a Christ
with tied hands. All the roof is gone