hat was what the stars sang and the little
ripples and the leaves. That was what the hard rock knew and what the
shimmer of the water laughed to think of and what the glowing moon had to
tell her as it swam high in heaven, looking down into her heart and
swelling its tumultuous tide. The moon knew, the full moon that ever made
her pulse beat strong and her young life throb till its throbbing was a
pain, the full white moon that, dethroned on earth, still governs from
the skies the lives of women. She was loved. She was loved. And she, who
had vowed herself to die unmarried, she loved, loved, loved.

She knew that those only laugh at Love to whom the fullness of living has
been denied, in whose cold veins, adulterate with inherited disease, a
stagnant liquid mocks the purpose of the rich red blood of a healthy
race; that in that laugh of theirs is the, knell of them and of their
people; that the nation which has ceased to love has almost ceased to
live.

She knew that every breath she had ever drawn had been drawn that she
might live for this moment; that every inch of her stature and every
ounce of her muscle and every thought of her brain had built up slowly,
surely, ultimately, this all-absorbing passion; that upon her was the
hand of the Infinite driving her of her own nature to form a link in the
great Life-chain that stretches from the Whence into the Whither, to lose
herself in the appointed lot as the coral insect does whose tiny body
makes a continent possible.

She knew that Love is from the beginning and to all time, knew that it
comes to each as each is, to the strong in strength and to the weak in
weakness. She knew that to her it had come with all the force of her
grand physique and vigorous brain and dominant emotionality, that in her
heart one man, one hero, one lover, was enshrined and that to him she
would be loyal and true for ever and ever, choosing death rather than to
fail him.

She knew that they do rightly and for themselves well who in Love's
strength brush aside all worldly barriers and insensate prejudice. She
knew that it is the one great Democrat strong as Death--when it comes,
though sad to say in decaying states it comes too seldom; that its
imperious mandate makes the king no higher than the beggar-girl and binds
in sweet equality the child of fortune and the man of toil. She knew that
the mysterious Power which orders all things has not trusted to a frail
support in resting the conser