plied he, rather petulantly;
'but it brings more of confident security, and more of cherished
dreams, than you without me are capable of imparting.'

'Be it so!' answered the gentler ... 'none is less inclined to quarrel
or dispute than I am. Many whom you have wounded grievously, call upon
me for succour. But so little am I disposed to thwart you, it is
seldom I venture to do more for them than to whisper a few words of
comfort in passing. How many reproaches on these occasions have been
cast upon me for indifference and infidelity! Nearly as many, and
nearly in the same terms, as upon you!'

'Odd enough that we, O Sleep! should be thought so alike,' said Love,
contemptuously. 'Yonder is he who bears a nearer resemblance to you:
the dullest have observed it.' I fancied I turned my eyes to where he
was pointing, and saw at a distance the figure he designated.
Meanwhile the contention went on uninterruptedly. Sleep was slow in
asserting his power or his benefits. Love recapitulated them; but only
that he might assert his own above them. Suddenly he called on me to
decide, and to choose my patron. Under the influence, first of the
one, then of the other, I sprang from repose to rapture, I alighted
from rapture on repose ... and knew not which was sweetest. Love was
very angry with me, and declared he would cross me throughout the
whole of my existence. Whatever I might on other occasions have
thought of his veracity, I now felt too surely the conviction that he
would keep his word. At last, before the close of the altercation, the
third Genius had advanced, and stood near us. I cannot tell how I knew
him, but I knew him to be the Genius of Death. Breathless as I was at
beholding him, I soon became familiar with his features. First they
seemed only calm; presently they grew contemplative; and lastly
beautiful: those of the Graces themselves are less regular, less
harmonious, less composed. Love glanced at him unsteadily, with a
countenance in which there was somewhat of anxiety, somewhat of
disdain; and cried: 'Go away! go away! nothing that thou touchest,
lives.'

'Say rather, child!' replied the advancing form, and advancing grew
loftier and statelier, 'say rather that nothing of beautiful or of
glorious lives its own true life until my wing hath passed over it.'

Love pouted, and rumpled and bent down with his forefinger the stiff
short feathers on his arrow-head; but replied not. Although he frowned
worse than eve