l
was smiles, blushes, happiness, forward-looking to a long, joyful
future. They knelt before me; I uplifted my hands and invoked the last
blessing,--the final curse! My heart burned, and the smoke of its fire
enveloped bride and groom, fouling his yellow beard, and smirching her
silvery veil; shutting out heaven from their prayers, and blackening
their path before them. They neither felt nor knew. They kissed,--I
saw their lips meet,--as Balder and Gnulemah to-day. Then I covered my
face and seemed to be in prayer!

"Gnulemah,--I hate her!--yes, but hatred sometimes touches the heart
like love. I love her!--to marry her? Woe to him who becomes her
husband! As a daughter?--no daughter is she of mine!--I hate her,
then.

"Why am I childless?--how would I have loved a child! I would have
left all else to love my child! I would have been the one father in
the world! My life should have been full of love as it has been of
hate. Why did not God send me a wife and a daughter?"

Men's ears have grown deaf to any save the most commonplace oracles.
But there is ever a warning voice for who will listen. One may object
that its language is unknown, or its whisper inaudible; but to the
question, "Whence your ignorance and deafness?" what shall be the
answer?

In Manetho's case it appears to have been the venerable robe that took
on itself the task of remonstrance.

"You are unreasonable, friend," it interposed with a gentle rustle.
"Gnulemah, if not your daughter, might, however, have stood you in
place of one; and she would have done you just as much good, in the
way of softening and elevating your nature, as though she had been the
issue of your own loins. You have turned the milk and honey of your
life into gall and wormwood; and I wish I could feel sure that only
you would get the benefit of it!"

The reproof had as well been spared; it is doubtful whether the
culprit heard so much as a word of it. His reverie rambled on.

"Keen,--that Balder! he half suspects me. Had I not so hurried him to
a conclusion, he would have questioned me too closely. He shall know
all presently, even as I promised him!--shall hear a sounder guess at
Gnulemah's genealogy than was made to-day.

"Do I love her?--only as the means to my end! The end once gained, I
shall hate her as I do him. But not yet,--and therefore must I love
him as well as her. They shall be, to-day, my beloved children!
To-morrow,--how shall I endure till to-morrow,--a