ed at an absolute
understanding of what she herself had divined while half comprehending.

Theirs was one of the few immortal loves that reveal the rarely sounded
deeps of the soul while in its frail tenement on earth; and he harbored
not a doubt that their love was stronger than mortality and that their
ultimate union was decreed. Meanwhile, she would suffer, no one but he
could dream how completely, but her strong soul would conquer, and she
would live the life she had visioned in moments of despair; not of
cloistered selfishness, but of incomparable usefulness to her little
world; and far happier, in her eternal youthfulness of heart, in that
divine life of the imagination where he must always be with her as she
had known him briefly at his best, than in the blunt commonplaceness of
daily existence, the routine and disillusionment of the world.
Perhaps--who knew?--he had, after all, given her the best that man can
offer to a woman of exalted nature; instead of taking again with his
left hand what his right had bestowed; completed the great gift of life
with the priceless beacon of death.

How unlike was life to the old Greek tragedies! He recalled his
prophetic sense of impending happiness, success, triumph, as he entered
California, the rejuvenescence of his spirit in the renewal of his
wasted forces even before he loved the woman. Every event of the past
year, in spite of the obstacles that mortal must expect, had marched
with his ambitions and desires, and straight toward a future that would
have given him the most coveted of all destinies, a station in history.
There had not been a hint that his brain, so meaningly and consummately
equipped, would perish in the ruins of his body in less than a
twelvemonth from that fragrant morning when he had entered the home of
Concha Arguello tingling with a pagan joy in mere existence, a sudden
rush of desire for the keen, wild happiness of youth--

His eyes wandered from the bright cross above the little cemetery where
he was to lie, and contracted with an expression of wonder. Where had
Jon found Castilian roses in this barren land? No man had ever been
more blest in a servant, but could even he--here-- With the last
triumph of will over matter he raised his head, his keen, searching
gaze noting every detail of the room, bare and unlovely save for its
altar and ikons, its kneeling priests and nuns. His eyes expanded, his
nostrils quivered. As he sank down in the emb