m, no one knows
whither they lead; and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the
soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes."

"And your husband," asked the Spirit, after a pause, "never got beyond
the family sitting-room?"

"Never," she returned, impatiently; "and the worst of it was that he was
quite content to remain there. He thought it perfectly beautiful, and
sometimes, when he was admiring its commonplace furniture, insignificant
as the chairs and tables of a hotel parlor, I felt like crying out to
him: 'Fool, will you never guess that close at hand are rooms full of
treasures and wonders, such as the eye of man hath not seen, rooms that
no step has crossed, but that might be yours to live in, could you but
find the handle of the door?'"

"Then," the Spirit continued, "those moments of which you lately spoke,
which seemed to come to you like scattered hints of the fulness of life,
were not shared with your husband?"

"Oh, no--never. He was different. His boots creaked, and he always
slammed the door when he went out, and he never read anything but
railway novels and the sporting advertisements in the papers--and--and,
in short, we never understood each other in the least."

"To what influence, then, did you owe those exquisite sensations?"

"I can hardly tell. Sometimes to the perfume of a flower; sometimes to a
verse of Dante or of Shakespeare; sometimes to a picture or a sunset,
or to one of those calm days at sea, when one seems to be lying in
the hollow of a blue pearl; sometimes, but rarely, to a word spoken by
someone who chanced to give utterance, at the right moment, to what I
felt but could not express."

"Someone whom you loved?" asked the Spirit.

"I never loved anyone, in that way," she said, rather sadly, "nor was
I thinking of any one person when I spoke, but of two or three who, by
touching for an instant upon a certain chord of my being, had called
forth a single note of that strange melody which seemed sleeping in my
soul. It has seldom happened, however, that I have owed such feelings to
people; and no one ever gave me a moment of such happiness as it was my
lot to feel one evening in the Church of Or San Michele, in Florence."

"Tell me about it," said the Spirit.

"It was near sunset on a rainy spring afternoon in Easter week. The
clouds had vanished, dispersed by a sudden wind, and as we entered the
church the fiery panes of the high windows shone out like lamps