ries, all ending where this was to begin.
Their lips had never met, yet the thrill of life meeting life and the
blinding delight of each in the other were long familiar, as from ages,
while fresh and untasted still as the bloom on a flower at dawn.

Then, when they had kissed once, they sat down in the old place,
wondering what words would come, and whether they should ever need words
at all after that. And somehow, Cecilia thought of her three questions,
and they all were answered as youth answers them, in one way and with
one word; and the answer seemed so full of meaning, and of faith and
hope and charity, that the questions need never be asked again, nor any
others like them, to the end of her life; nor did she believe that she
could ever trouble her brain again about _Thus spake Zarathushthra_, and
the Man who had killed God, and the overcoming of Pity, and the Eternal
Return, and all those terrible and wonderful things that live in
Nietzsche's mazy web, waiting to torment and devour the poor human moth
that tries to fly upward.

But as for Kant's Categorical Imperative, in order to act in such a
manner that the reasons for her actions might be considered a universal
law, it was only necessary to realise how very much she loved the man
she had chosen, and how very much he loved her; for how indeed could it
then be possible not to live so as to deserve to be happy?

She had thought of these things during the night and had fallen asleep
very happy in realising the perfect simplicity of all science,
philosophy, and transcendental reasoning, and vaguely wondering why
every one could not solve the problems of the universe as she had.

"Is it all quite true?" she asked now, with a little fluttering wonder.
"Shall I wake and hear the door shutting, and be alone, and frightened
as I used to be?"

Lamberti smiled.

"I should have waked already," he said, "when we were standing there by
the fountain. I always did when I dreamt of you."

"So did I. Do you think we really met in our dreams?" She blushed
faintly.

"Do you know that you have not told me once to-day that you care for me,
ever so little?" he asked.

"I have told you much more than that, a thousand times over, in a
thousand ways."

"I wonder whether we really met!"

MARIETTA

A MAID OF VENICE

By F. MARION CRAWFORD

_Author of "Saracine