LIBRARY 
 
 UMvERsrrr OF 
 
 CALIKORNIA 
 ! SAN DIEGO
 
 " 
 
 anfc Her 
 Soften
 
 attb 
 
 Soften Eooif 
 
 H. S. STONE & COMPANY 
 CHICAGO MDCCCCI
 
 COPYRIGHT I9O1 BY 
 HERBERT S. STONE & CO.
 
 I DEDICATE TO W. J. DAWSON, 
 
 POET, PREACHER, NOVELIST, AND CRITIC, 
 ALL THAT APPROACHES TO BEAUTY IN THIS LITTLE 
 
 BOOK, IN GRATEFUL RECOGNITION OF 
 
 THE DAY ON WHICH HE STOOD AT THE THRESHOLD 
 
 OF MY MANHOOD, WITH NOBLE 
 
 WORDS OF CHEER 
 
 E. L. 
 
 MEXICO CITY, DECEMBER, IQOO
 
 Cupfrrosjme ant 2|er 
 
 Contents 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 PROEM 3 
 
 I. THE MEETING ... 9 
 
 II. CASTLE BUILDING . . 25 
 
 III. THE REVELATION OF LOVE 41 
 
 IV. LOVE'S DISHONOURING . 53 
 V. THE "GOLDEN BOOK" . 73 
 
 VI. A PARADISE WITHOUT A 
 
 SERPENT .... 91 
 
 VII. BEHIND THE " FLAMING 
 
 BARRIERS". . . . in 
 
 EPILOGUE . . . . . 137
 
 Euphrosyne and 
 Her "Golden Book"
 
 Euphrosyne and 
 Her " Golden Book" 
 
 V Proem 
 
 HIS little book 
 tells how I met 
 Euphrosyne and 
 how she parted 
 from me forever 
 not in anger, 
 but with love in 
 her eyes and up- 
 on her lips. It 
 tells also, but 
 with great omissions, what she thought and 
 said between the meeting and the parting. 
 If the reader have kindly patience until he 
 reach the end, he may yet say it is no story 
 at all. In that matter I, Arthur Stanilaus, 
 can offer no criticism, because to me this 
 is the one story of my life. 
 
 Of course Euphrosyne was not her bap- 
 tismal name, but the one I gave to her 
 because of the joy that attended her whith- 
 3
 
 and 
 
 ersoever she went. What her actual name 
 was can be of no interest to any one to-day, 
 save the too curious. She was always Eu- 
 phrosyne to me; and, I doubt not, she bears 
 that name still among those to whom she 
 has gone. It seems but yesterday that we 
 met a yesterday of fourteen long years, 
 years of silence. For in all that time her 
 name has never once passed my lips, though 
 every July I read once again in that won- 
 derful book she loved so much. 
 
 But were you to make a most diligent 
 search throughout my library you would not 
 be able to find that particular copy, for both 
 she and it have a place quite apart in my 
 life: a sacred, hidden place like unto the 
 secret household shrine of a devotee of 
 strange gods in a strange land; a place one 
 only dares enter when all the doors and win- 
 dows which communicate with the alien, outer 
 world are fast closed; a place of rich benisons 
 and unutterable visions; a place of many 
 memories and prayers. From the day the 
 book was put into my hands a most pre- 
 cious gift and token with its careful under- 
 lines and its naive marginalia, no man hath
 
 " 
 
 d&otten I3oofc" 
 
 ever seen it, although it has been my com- 
 panion in all my wanderings. 
 
 If you are in search of strange adventures, 
 or of exciting and dramatic incidents, you 
 had better not read any further here: this 
 story is not for you. It is written for those 
 who have loved Love in the days long 
 passed; and who, in rare felicitous moments, 
 still catch visions of her passing, and hear 
 the sound of her unshod feet; and for those 
 who hold with "pious obstinacy" that mo- 
 tives and endeavours which have a certain 
 scrupulous purity and high dignity about 
 them are equal, in themselves, to great 
 achievements: even when, to outward seem- 
 ing, life lies on the condemned level of com- 
 monplaceness.
 
 The Meeting
 
 The Meeting 
 
 O you remem- 
 ber, Euphros- 
 
 yne 
 
 in 
 
 that 
 
 mysterious city 
 whither you fled 
 so soon, do you 
 remember that 
 July morning 
 when you and I 
 met? Do you 
 still remember the little, lazy Irish town near 
 which even the Atlantic ebbed and flowed 
 lazily; and our confessed surprise that the 
 railway station could boast the possession 
 of a book-stall? As I take up my pen to 
 write to you, who will never see the writing, 
 it is of that book-stall I think first. Amid 
 the confusion of a late arrival my imagina- 
 tion had glimpsed the ragged rows of books. 
 But the next morning that morning! I 
 could not say whether I had or only fan-
 
 and 
 
 cied that I had seen them, so must needs 
 satisfy an awakened curiosity. Yes, my 
 fancy had not played me false; there was 
 the stall, a poor, tottering, loose -jointed 
 thing bowing perilously beneath its limited 
 burden of books and magazines. There, 
 also, like a shining angel clothed in white, 
 stood you. Do you remember turning to 
 look at me as I came through the narrow 
 door at the right of the platform? Then, 
 because I stared so, the rich color mounted 
 your cheeks, encroaching on the even light 
 of your large gray eyes, until the shining of 
 your face and the shining of your eyes were 
 together far too wonderful for a man to see 
 unmoved. 
 
 How strangely confused we both were as 
 we commenced a feverish examination of the 
 contents of the stall! Though what there 
 could be about my uncomely appearance to 
 disturb you I have never been able even to 
 guess. My own examination was a decided 
 failure, for I did not see the name of a single 
 book. I picked up one and read, "As It 
 Were the Face of an Angel"; another and 
 read, " With Open Vision"; yet another and
 
 I3oofe 
 
 read, " The Pure in Heart." I knew unques- 
 tionably that the books bore no such titles, 
 but I could see nothing else. And now that 
 years have passed over my head, leaving me 
 prematurely aged and gray, and although I 
 have travelled in many lands and seen many 
 wonderful things, those three titles, which 
 were not, have ever stayed by me, so that I 
 never open a new book without seeing on its 
 title-page your face. 
 
 Bending over the books, I tried fitfully to 
 analyze what I had seen in those first moments 
 when I gazed at you from the narrow door- 
 way. Seneca, in a famous letter, writes of 
 the " conspicuous chastity" of his mother, 
 and I knew now for the first time what the 
 phrase could be made to mean. But it was 
 not that which gave the peculiar distinction 
 to your face, but something greater which 
 included that and all other beautiful things. 
 It was Vision that same bewildering presence 
 which one sees in fine portraits of Dante, 
 only tempered and refined by the woman's 
 soul in you. Yes, Vision, that was it; an 
 inexpressible something which had come 
 from a higher sphere and had brought the
 
 ana 
 
 mysteries, the secrets, with it and enshrined 
 them in your soul. All that I saw without 
 wholly grasping the significance of it, yet 
 seeing enough to be dimly aware that, all 
 unconsciously, I had passed into a new and 
 superior kingdom of the spirit: and the 
 knowledge strangely disquieted me. 
 
 While vaguely interrogating my conscious- 
 ness for some method of introducing myself, 
 I heard you say, just above a whisper and 
 with a surprised catch in your voice : 
 
 " Walter Pater !" 
 
 You had unearthed a soiled magazine 
 which contained one of those delicate " Imag- 
 inary Portraits" of his "Sebastian van 
 Storck." 
 
 Those were the days when Mr. Pater was 
 known to the few, days when he was honoured 
 and understood by a little company of read- 
 ers in a manner that, perhaps, cannot occur 
 again, days when to be known as a discern- 
 ing lover of his work was a sufficient passport 
 to many a friendship. And the sound of 
 that name in so unlikely a spot acted like 
 magic on my senses. It was as if one found 
 a chart at the entrance to an unexplored
 
 13006" 13 
 
 region. So I said, with an abruptness that 
 redeemed if it did not hide the commort- 
 placeness of the remark : 
 
 " So Pater is a favourite of yours !" 
 
 " Oh, yes; I read everything of his that I can 
 find," you answered, looking up and smiling. 
 "And you ?" 
 
 "I I reverence him." 
 
 I do not know precisely what happened 
 next; we must have said other things, but 
 what they were I cannot now recall. I do 
 know that in a few minutes we were walking 
 out of the railway station together in posses- 
 sion of the magazine. I also remember for 
 how could I forget ? that you asked me not 
 to walk so quickly, and told me you were ill 
 and scarcely expected to live through another 
 winter. 
 
 There are moments in life when knowledge 
 passes swiftly from one soul to another with- 
 out speech or effort, so that in the new mys- 
 tical intelligence all the preceding years are as 
 though they had not been, and two who 
 were strangers until then step together into 
 the Holy of Holies for weal or woe. Some- 
 thing approaching this took place during our
 
 14 up^ro$ime ana 
 
 short walk from the station to the shore, 
 the ordinariness of our conversation only 
 veiling the deeper commerce of our souls. I 
 told you that I was a physician, and plied you 
 with questions concerning yourself, which 
 were so merrily answered that, doctor though 
 I was, for the moment I fancied you must 
 have deceived yourself as to the extent of 
 your malady. Oh, my Euphrosyne, it was I 
 who stood deceived, not you ! Even that 
 short walk taxed your failing strength, and 
 you seemed relieved when a turning in the 
 road brought us abruptly to the great sea. 
 You pointed out your favourite resting-place 
 among the rocks where " some giant of long 
 ago had hewn an easy-chair for his love," you 
 told me. And as we sat together, you in 
 the chair of love and I on the moss-like 
 grass at your feet, we read " Sebastian van 
 Storck" or rather you read and I listened. 
 I am hundreds of miles from those rocks 
 to-day, and shall never visit them again; yet 
 the monotonous murmur of the sea reaching 
 out before us towards infinity, the long, un- 
 dulating stretch of wild moorland on our 
 right, and the bleak, ruggedly naked aspect
 
 Soften I3oofe" 15 
 
 of all visible creation (the town not being 
 seen from the rocks) are with me still. With 
 me also is the sound of your voice as I heard 
 it that morning. The clear yet almost un- 
 stressed manner of your reading accorded so 
 perfectly with the stately, elaborated, and 
 withal beautiful prose of the author that one 
 easily imagined you were reading your own 
 work. 
 
 On reaching the end of the story, you 
 turned back a few pages. " For though Se- 
 bastian van Storck refused to travel," you 
 read, " he loved the distant enjoyed the 
 sense of things seen from a distance, carrying 
 us, as on wide wings of space itself, far out 
 of one's actual surrounding." You paused 
 a while, and I ventured to remark that 
 Mr. Pater's own literary preferences seemed 
 to lie in that direction also. 
 
 "There is always a distinct remoteness 
 from his own age in his choice of subjects," 
 I said; "a remoteness which must be indi- 
 vidual, and of deliberate choosing, for it ex- 
 tends even to his style, which is more Latin 
 than Teuton. With some notable excep- 
 tions Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Rossetti,
 
 anD 
 
 for instance all his studies are of men re- 
 moved from us by distance of both age and 
 place. Marcus Aurelius, Watteau, the great 
 portraits of the Renaissance, Euripides, and 
 Greek sculpture and myths: these are the 
 persons and times and things among which 
 he loves to abide, whose spirit and ideals he 
 loves to interpret." 
 
 " I think, at least for my own part," you 
 answered, letting the magazine lie on your 
 lap, " half of my delight in him is because of 
 his inability which must have arisen through 
 repeated early refusals to be entirely mod- 
 ern. The pure, perfumed atmosphere of 
 past ages and sunnier climes seems to per- 
 vade all his thoughts, even in those excepted 
 essays, literally creating his expression of 
 them, so that one is carried f far out of one's 
 actual surrounding.' ' 
 
 "Yet with all his apparent detachment 
 from the present," I argued, "he is not 
 oblivious to it; perhaps only half despises 
 it, or thinks he does and longs to make good 
 his escape from it. But when on occasion 
 he does with a sudden down-rush touch the 
 living present, if only for a moment, it gives
 
 (0olDen 13006" 17 
 
 us the same shock of felicitous amazement 
 that we experienced a while ago in the unex- 
 pected discovery that Sebastian lost his life 
 in a thoroughly human effort to save a little 
 child." 
 
 We talked of several of the essays and 
 studies that had already appeared, and of 
 "Marius, the Epicurean," scarcely a year 
 old; and I remember that you noted how 
 dominant was the fascination that restless, 
 unsatisfied dreamers exercised over him. 
 
 "In his own way," I said, " he realizes as 
 profoundly as Robert Browning, that there 
 is nothing of greater or more enduring sig- 
 nificance than the sincere record of the 
 development of a soul. But the souls whose 
 development he chooses to record have a 
 peculiar refinement and delicacy about them 
 which effectually separate them from all 
 others whose inner life has been revealed to 
 us." 
 
 " Perhaps they have a very true and close 
 affinity to his own soul," you said. " Some 
 day Montaigne will surely lay imperative 
 hands on Mr. Pater and demand interpre- 
 tation."
 
 1 8 Cup^ro^ne anu 
 
 " Oh, no ! " This was said with emphasis, 
 on what grounds I do not remember. 
 
 " But I feel sure of it ! And how inter- 
 esting it will be to see in what manner the 
 irreconcilable demons that dwelt in the soul 
 of that whimsical and intentional sceptic will 
 impress a so sensitive, reverent, and essen- 
 tially religious spirit ! But," with a wistful 
 gaze far over the sea, "I shall not be here to 
 read it." 
 
 How your words and look came back to 
 me, when one morning, two years afterward, 
 I read that masterly fifth chapter of " Gaston 
 de Latour." And both your predictions 
 were fulfilled you were not here to read it- 
 It is strange how much of this first con- 
 versation comes back to me through all these 
 years. We talked no more of Walter Pater 
 that morning, but unconsciously drifted to 
 personalities. Do you remember, Euphros- 
 yne, as we walked slowly towards the town, 
 my confessing haltingly to a foolish thirst 
 for fame? a weakness so characteristic of 
 youth. 
 
 "Why not rest content," you answered, 
 "in endeavouring after nobility and goodness,
 
 19 
 
 in being muy simpatico, as the Spaniard so 
 wonderfully phrases it ? Fame and publicity 
 are by no means unmixed good. I imagine 
 there are many literary and other famous 
 men and women who would go back (if they 
 might) gladly into the comparative obscurity 
 of their younger days when, at the least, they 
 had large room in which to live their own 
 lives as freely, as completely, as they chose." 
 
 "But," rather inconsequently, "a doctor's 
 sphere of influence is very limited. Besides, 
 that is hardly what I meant." 
 
 Then in that wonderfully abrupt way of 
 yours which I learned to love so much, you 
 said, "Well, what is your ideal of existence, 
 Dr. Stanilaus?" 
 
 The unexpected sound of my name gave 
 me a start, for I had not been sure that you 
 had even heard when I mentioned it on the 
 road to the rocks. For a moment I was silent, 
 then delivered myself of my youthful ideals 
 in breathless haste. 
 
 "To my vocation I would add an avoca- 
 tion. I would be a moral and intellectual 
 force in achieved literature. I would write 
 such books and sing such songs as would
 
 20 dguoswe ana 
 
 compel the greater part of a reluctant people 
 to listen and grow nobler for listening. I 
 would do this, yet all the while personally 
 lie securely hidden from the avid curiosity 
 of foolish and shallow souls." 
 
 This appears to-day so pertly modest that 
 I write it with misgiving, for others may see 
 in it what you did not. You saw only the 
 pure enthusiasm of a youth not wholly 
 swamped in the cynicism of the dissecting- 
 room; and you responded, half dreamily, I 
 thought, and without any sense of the incon- 
 gruous. 
 
 "Why, that would be like unto the influ- 
 ence of God, whom no man hath seen at any 
 time; whom no man, surely, can hope effect- 
 ively to imitate! Even those c who have 
 shone in a wondrous way,' to quote Marcus 
 Aurelius, have not accomplished so much." 
 
 A vast, solemn stillness fell upon us, and 
 as we gazed across the shining waters at 
 our feet, once again it seemed our souls met 
 and in the silence swore eternal fellowship. 
 No word was uttered while we lingered there, 
 but for one ineffable moment you looked 
 clear into my eyes, then turned suddenly
 
 21 
 
 towards a cottage a short distance off, sepa- 
 rated from the shore by a wide road and its 
 own little garden. When we reached the 
 white gate which I instinctively felt was to 
 be the place of parting, you had recovered 
 from the strange tumult that had so stirred 
 our souls and violated the outer stillness. 
 
 "See," you cried, merrily, "this is the 
 House that Jack built, where dwells the 
 maiden all forlorn. Good-bye for the present, 
 my newly found friend." You spoke rapidly 
 then, half questioningly, half authoritatively, 
 with little pauses between the sentences. "We 
 shall see more of each other. . . . Can we 
 not read 'Marius' over again, . . . and to- 
 gether? ... It is my * Golden Book.' . . . 
 I should like to ... Ah! this morning . . . 
 it has been so wonder-filled ... so strange. 
 . . . We will meet to-morrow ! " 
 
 " Yes ! to-morrow. Shall it be at the 
 giant's chair ? " 
 
 You nodded, and with a brief, almost con- 
 vulsive, clasp of our hands, we parted. And 
 the things of the last few hours began to 
 strive for their rightful place among the holy 
 things of life.
 
 Castle-
 
 Castle- 
 
 j&Two 
 
 OW shall I write 
 of the to-mor- 
 row and all the 
 to-morrows that 
 came after ? We 
 were not to meet 
 for three long, 
 anxious days; 
 and then it was 
 notat the giant's 
 chair, but in your own sacred chamber we 
 met, for you were too weak to walk abroad. 
 
 But on the afternoon of that first day 
 I had no presentiment of immediate sorrow. 
 I was filled with a feverish ecstasy which 
 no physical exertion in the least abated. 
 What had befallen me that morning? Noth- 
 ing, I said, with a positiveness that was in
 
 26 urogne an& 
 
 itself a disavowal of the negative. What had 
 happened, then ? So I noted in dispassionate 
 review the events of the morning. But such 
 a review told me nothing. Clearly, dispas- 
 sionateness was not the medium through 
 which such startling experiences could be 
 interpreted. There was naught in the bare 
 recital of actual incidents, of actual words, 
 to account for the faintness and excessive 
 trembling that almost mastered me now that 
 I was alone. What was the meaning of it all ? 
 I knew even then what the final answer must 
 be, but persisted in a refusal to see it. How 
 could I do otherwise? The common tragedy 
 of a thousand homes was an open scroll 
 to me. I had stood in the presence of pain 
 and sorrow, noting often the indifference 
 of husband to wife, of wife to husband; and 
 had made declaration many times of my utter 
 disbelief in the existence of love as the poets 
 sang of it. And now what? A singular con- 
 sciousness of compulsion drove me towards 
 acknowledgment. I knew that, for good or ill, 
 love had come to me, and I had received her 
 unresistingly; and the knowledge brought 
 with it once more a mysterious, unexpected
 
 dSol&en I3oofe " 27 
 
 sensation closely akin to terror, but accom- 
 panied now by a definite sense of spiritual 
 luxury and rapture. 
 
 Early next morning I was at the trysting- 
 chair, restless and melancholy. The future 
 has for me nothing of the inspiring fascina- 
 tion about it which it seems to have for 
 so many other meditative persons. When 
 it does intrude its shadowy presence near 
 me, it seems peopled rather with ogres than 
 with angels, and fills me with an expectation 
 of possible calamities rather than of " sweet 
 discoveries." And to-day the future became 
 urgent in its demand for attention the 
 steadier my refusal to speculate, the more 
 insistently its dim, inscrutable face appeared 
 before me. For a little while a measure 
 of relief came to me through watching the 
 reluctant retreat of the tide, and in planting 
 an imaginary stick in the sand I could not 
 see and murmuring, "When the tide goes 
 beyond that point, she will come." Four 
 times, in fancy, I removed my divining-rod; 
 four times I said, "She will surely come." 
 But you came not. So, wondering greatly, 
 I started to retrace step by step the path
 
 28 Curo0ne and 
 
 we had trod together the morning before. 
 Little by little, if the future did not shape 
 itself satisfactorily, the present became more 
 clearly and directly legible. Very many things 
 remained enshrouded, but one thing was true 
 and plain: whatever the result might be, 
 1 loved you with that love a man knows but 
 once in life, and whether I won you or lost 
 you, yours I was to use as you pleased. All 
 the ecstasy which had been banished, leaving 
 me uncomforted, came back like the sudden 
 sun on an April day. What did the future 
 matter? The soul, I thought, stands erect 
 in the love it bestows, and not in any love 
 that might or might not come to it from 
 without. And my love, full-grown in a night 
 for so it seemed to my unaccustomed 
 senses was to be laid at your feet, there 
 to stay. I stood still a moment watch- 
 ing the receding waves, then repeated half- 
 aloud : 
 
 " But laid at your feet, 
 That which was weak shall be strong, 
 That which was cold shall take fire, 
 That which was bitter be sweet."
 
 d&ol&en -Boofe" 29 
 
 My meditations were suddenly interrupted 
 by the vision of a little maid veritably aure- 
 oled in golden hair. She was coming up the 
 hillock which separated the shore from the 
 moorland, and shading her eyes with her 
 left hand, was gazing in my direction as 
 if in search of some one. She walked in 
 the firm and alert manner so characteristic 
 of North-Country maidens. The wind catch- 
 ing her hair, lifted it up, flaunting it in the 
 face of the sun, as though with joyous laughter 
 it bade him look at an earthly glory which 
 could challenge his own. And in very truth, 
 of all the earth-born things mine eyes ever 
 rested upon, none were sunnier than that fair, 
 merry maid bathed in the morning light. 
 She looked at me several times hesitatingly 
 as she advanced, and at last, apparently satis- 
 fied, came straight towards me, and I learned 
 what I had already guessed, that she had come 
 from you. I learned also that you were ill, 
 and could not leave your room. No! not 
 very ill, I was given to understand on cross- 
 examination, but you had caught a slight cold 
 yesterday. She had spoken mechanically,
 
 30 Cup^ro^ne anD 
 
 as if repeating what had been told her. Then 
 most unexpectedly large tears rolled down her 
 dimpled cheeks. 
 
 " Oh, sir," she exclaimed, amid her sobs, 
 " my mistress is dying, dying, and nothing 
 seems to do her good. She has been getting 
 worse and worse for the last two years. 
 Can't you do something?" 
 
 After I had somewhat quieted her, she 
 told me that she had been with you for four 
 years, ever since your last visit to Yorkshire; 
 that she worshipped you with all her heart. 
 She said your father had died just two years 
 ago. She did not know when your mother 
 had died, but it was long before she entered 
 into your service. Yes, you were utterly 
 alone, she said on my asking her. You had 
 not a relative in the whole world, she thought. 
 Here her sobs and tears became so tempes- 
 tuous, and her sentences so incoherent, that 
 all I could do was to pacify her once more 
 and send her back to you with the assur- 
 ance that I would follow later, which she 
 took to mean a possibility of improvement 
 in her dear mistress. And I well, I had 
 not the heart to tell her what I began to
 
 31 
 
 fear with a great fear, that neither I nor 
 any other doctor could be of use to you 
 now. 
 
 The little maid went tripping down the 
 hill, and I, with bowed head and heavy heart, 
 walked back to the town. Buying a few 
 fragrant roses and some rich grapes, I sent 
 them to you, with a formal note of inquiry ; 
 then locked the door of my room and sat 
 down to think. 
 
 There are certain moments in life wherein 
 a man, if he be valiant, takes hold of the 
 future with all his might, headily expectant 
 that God will decipher things aright through 
 him. On retrospection, such moments are 
 recognized as being of the nature of a crisis. 
 Just such a crisis now approached. All 
 things seemed to have changed during the 
 last hour, yet in reality they remained as 
 they had ever been. The only difference lay 
 in my attitude towards them. The know- 
 ledge which I had put far from my thoughts 
 before, I now faced ; and the realization that 
 the probabilities were strongly against your 
 living many months came upon me with 
 greater force. I grew subtly conscious of a
 
 32 
 
 warring of hardly articulated thoughts, the 
 very mistiness of which was an added distress. 
 At one moment I seemed to be ransacking 
 memory for something I could not define; at 
 another I was plunging frantically into unex- 
 plored caverns of my being and finding them 
 peopled with shadows of things never to be 
 actualized. And the sense of appalling help- 
 lessness, of being, as it were, in a region 
 hitherto sedulously avoided, and of which I 
 had neither map nor guide, robbed me of the 
 last remnants of volitiency. 
 
 Slowly the strain relaxed. The assurance 
 that an easy adjustment lay in my own hands 
 danced, like a living thing, across my brain. 
 Nothing had been said to you, not even 
 vaguely hinted; I was as free as the seagull 
 that flew crying past the window. I could 
 go away now, and forever : go inland like the 
 gull at presage of violent storms. Then yes- 
 terday would be nothing more than a beauti- 
 ful, idyllic vision. . . . Would it ? Nay, 
 but like that same seagull I should pine for 
 the coast and what it held for me, and would 
 be driven back again by the vehemence of 
 irrepressible yearnings. Besides, I was rap-
 
 1300&" 33 
 
 idly discovering that whether I went or 
 stayed, the future had already resolved itself 
 into ineluctable, if still distant, history ; his- 
 tory which my puny attempts at interference 
 could in no wise avert. 
 
 " If one advances confidently in the direc- 
 tion of his dreams, and endeavours to live the 
 life he has imagined, he will meet with a suc- 
 cess unexpected in common hours. He will 
 put some things behind, will pass an invisible 
 boundary; new, universal, and more liberal 
 laws will begin to establish themselves around 
 and within him; or the old laws will be ex- 
 panded in his favour in a more liberal sense, 
 and he will Jive with the license of a higher 
 order of beings. In proportion as he sim- 
 plifies his life, the laws of the universal will 
 appear less complex, and solitude will not be 
 solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness 
 weakness. If you have built castles in the 
 air, your work need not be lost that is where 
 they should be; now put the foundations 
 under them." 
 
 Where had I read that? And what made 
 it come to me now with so clear an accentua-
 
 34 Cup^ro^ne and 
 
 tion ? It was as though some one stood close 
 behind me whispering the words in my ear. 
 How strange that my memory should have 
 retained it and so perfectly ! Only a small 
 portion of it could be applicable to the situa- 
 tion in which I found myself; but where 
 could I have read it? Ah, now I remem- 
 bered ; it was from a little volume of Tho- 
 reau's which I had read only a few days before 
 leaving home : Thoreau, that embodiment 
 of philosophical contradictions ; Thoreau, 
 who could imagine himself a reincarnated 
 primitive woodman in a primitive solitude 
 when within call of a vulgar, modern city ! 
 
 But what had those beautiful sentences to 
 do with me? It must have been the "cas- 
 tles in the air" that had brought them to 
 my mind. I had been building with a ven- 
 geance ! What did Thoreau mean by, " Now 
 put the foundations under them " ? Suppos- 
 ing one saw the foundations, upon which 
 alone one's castles (in the air or on the earth) 
 could be effectively erected, slowly crumbling 
 to pieces ; and supposing one to be wholly 
 helpless to prevent such disaster what then? 
 I laughed aloud at the mental picture in such
 
 " 
 
 (0olDenl3ooir 35 
 
 sudden activity before me a bitter, fearful 
 laugh as I remember once, when a little 
 boy, laughing with sheer fright at a falling 
 factory chimney: now, as then, uncontrol- 
 lable weeping followed the laughter. 
 
 When the emotion had exhausted itself, I 
 got up and began to pace the floor. It was 
 certain that one " invisible boundary " had 
 been passed, that I was in another spiritual 
 country, and I could not, however the long- 
 ing might possess me, retrace my steps. "If 
 one advances confidently in the direction of 
 his dreams" that was the only thing then 
 left for me : to advance ! Perhaps there 
 would be, in this case, that certain expansion 
 of the old laws, or an establishment of new, 
 unknown ones ; and as a direct effect I also 
 might find my castle-building not wholly in 
 vain, not wholly "lost." In what direction 
 any partial compensation could appear it was 
 not possible for me to conceive at that mo- 
 ment. Anyhow, I would advance and God 
 guide us rightly, I prayed. The uncon- 
 scious use of the plural pronoun arrested my 
 thought: already I knew, then, what I 
 would do.
 
 3 6 cftip^rogiwe and 
 
 Here a sharp knocking at the door startled 
 me out of my dreamings. It was only the 
 hotel-boy, but he held a small envelope in 
 his hand, which I saw instantly had not come 
 through the post-office. 
 
 "A letter for you, sir," he said, touching 
 his ribboned cap, and holding out his pre- 
 cious burden at arm's length. 
 
 I trembled so violently as I took the note 
 from him that I was glad he turned hurriedly 
 away. A letter with no stamp on it could 
 be from no one but you, I thought. And I 
 was right. It was only a few pencilled lines 
 expressive of your surprise and delight at my 
 little gift of flowers and fruit, and saying you 
 hoped to be out in a few days. Of the flow- 
 ers, you said they were the illuminated lan- 
 guage of God's love, and that they spake to 
 you of His tender joy in humanity. There 
 were only eight lines in all a note a stranger 
 might have written yet I breathed heavily 
 while I read them, as though they had been 
 a confession of love. And taking my writ- 
 ing-case, I left the hotel and walked with 
 rapid, feverish strides to the great chair of 
 love among the rocks. There I wrote to
 
 13006" 37 
 
 you, or commenced the writing, for it proved 
 impossible to say all I meant you to know 
 at one sitting. The second part of it was 
 written in the night, then finished the next 
 morning, where it had been begun, within 
 hearing of the rhythmic sigh of the receding 
 waves. 
 
 Of what I wrote I remember nothing to- 
 day, except its intention to be a confession 
 of my past life and of my present love. It 
 must have been a very confused and inco- 
 herent document, but it told you in its own 
 blundering and voluble manner the secrets 
 of a soul. I kept it by me until evening, 
 when the sun had gone down and the sea 
 itself seemed at rest. Then with some 
 grapes and wine the letter was sent on its 
 fateful mission. I watched the man who 
 bore it till he passed within the white gate, 
 and with an intolerable faintness at my heart, 
 I started at a fearful pace for the moorland. 
 It must have been late when I returned to 
 the hotel (though of what I had done in the 
 mean time I have now no recollection), for 
 everybody was in bed except a couple of 
 men-servants.
 
 38 
 
 I was thoroughly wearied, and slept 
 soundly, not rising until nearly ten o'clock. 
 At breakfast I inquired for letters ; there 
 were several, but not one from you. I was 
 too restless to read, too restless even to 
 write, so I strolled about the town for an 
 hour; I felt that I could not go to the rocks 
 again, at least without you. On returning, I 
 immediately noticed a little envelope stuck 
 in the strings of the letter-rack. I knew it, 
 knew the writing, and bounded upstairs to 
 read it. It contained only two words, a fig- 
 ure and an initial; but the reading turned 
 me dizzy, and for a few minutes I had to hold 
 hard to the table lest I should fall. This 
 was what I read : " Come at 4. E - ." 
 I had ventured to name you in my letter 
 "The Lady of Joy: Euphrosyne," and you 
 had accepted the name.
 
 The Revelation 
 of Love
 
 The Revelation 
 of Love 
 
 iree 
 
 S from some far- 
 off and unseen 
 dwelling, a deli- 
 cate fragrance 
 of remembered 
 woodbine and 
 wild briar-rose 
 creeps into my 
 room as I write. 
 I know from 
 whence it comes : the breath of the sea 
 mingles with it, and I hear the sound of a 
 sobbing wave as it bows its foam-crested head 
 for a fall. The fragrance fills the room, in- 
 vading the close sanctuary of the soul; it 
 stirs into lovely life ten thousand entombed 
 memories; it peoples my solitude with a 
 million messages of the past a variant, pro-
 
 42 up^ro#ittte and 
 
 fuse, unforgetable past ! a past which is ever 
 a present. The little cottage a short field's- 
 breadth from the shore; its tiny, well-kept 
 garden ; its encircling low wall so thickly 
 clothed in honeysuckle ; the straight, narrow 
 path from gate to porch, bordered on either 
 side by wild briar, all the sweeter for the 
 daily kiss of the sea: these are my eternal 
 possessions, for they have passed into the 
 kingdom of memory where none can disturb 
 them. 
 
 An atmosphere more chaste than that of 
 a nunnery, more peaceful than that of a ven- 
 erable minster, but with no hint of the 
 claustral, the unearthly, the impertinently 
 saintly, clung about the whole place, giving 
 to it a peculiar distinction, so that men and 
 women felt instinctively as they passed its 
 white gate that it might well be the chosen 
 abiding-place of angels. To sin amid such 
 surroundings could only be possible, one 
 would fancy, to a soul given over to Satan. 
 
 It was towards that cottage I bent my 
 steps that evening so long ago. For there 
 you dwelt, my Euphrosyne, and there you 
 had bid me come. As I lifted the latch of
 
 Golden Boofe" 43 
 
 the gate, it was as if I were going to God. 
 There was no taint of blasphemy in my 
 thought, for the barriers that evil-minded 
 men would erect between love and God have 
 ever been to me an impertinent intrusion. 
 As near to the spiritual as a man may be 
 in his love, I was as I entered your cottage 
 that evening. The lust of mere possession, 
 which so many men, to their undoing, mis- 
 take for love, had no part or lot in me. 
 This I say knowing what I say. Love, in- 
 deed, was a consuming fire, and the clarify- 
 ing flame swept through my being. I had 
 no thoughts for aught save what was to 
 come, and scarcely noticed the happy golden- 
 haired maid who opened the door for me. 
 My one desire was to stand before you long 
 enough to say what I had already written, 
 even though the next moment I should have 
 to turn my back upon you and see you no 
 more forever. So at last I stood in your 
 presence greatly wondering. 
 
 You were seated in a low arm-chair which 
 had been pushed close to the window, and 
 I noted immediately how pale your face was ; 
 but there was not in any single delicate line
 
 44 Cup^ro^ne and 
 
 of it that weary expression of suffering which 
 I was accustomed to see in the faces of those 
 whose sickness was constant. It was the 
 same calm, spiritual face which had so startled 
 me at the book-stall, now thrown into 
 striking relief by your beautiful hair and 
 the dark robe of clinging cashmere you 
 wore. I think your hair had been coiled in 
 a loose knot behind, but it fell luxuriantly in 
 soft, brown wavelets about your face, the 
 marvellous grace and loveliness of which, set 
 in such a living shadow, reminded me only 
 to be struck again by the infinite difference 
 of one of Leonardo's wonderful faces in red 
 chalk at the Louvre. 
 
 I stood motionless in the doorway, over- 
 come with awe and an unaccountable fear 
 that once again pressed close upon my heart. 
 Then you turned toward me, and it seemed 
 as if your every particular hair caught and 
 claimed the sunshine for its own. It is 
 certain that the room itself was flooded with 
 light, that your eyes glowed and faded, 
 gleamed and paled, as I never believed human 
 eyes could do. But how measure the strange 
 influences of that moment ? how tell precisely
 
 45 
 
 the unique impression stamped upon the 
 soul ? If one could find direct and complete 
 expression, he would hold the true secret of 
 style; and alas, that secret flees ever from 
 me ! To this day I see you as clearly as 
 I saw you then, but any attempt to describe 
 what I see is to court a signal failure. I had 
 often wondered since that first morning what 
 you would look like under the influence of 
 a great and pure passion, and now I saw, and 
 the sight awed me, troubled me so that I 
 trembled exceedingly. All the sweet, fair 
 things I had intended to say played sudden 
 truant. I felt myself encompassed around 
 and about by new and wholly unimagined 
 influences ; nothing in all my past experience 
 and knowledge had prepared me in the least 
 for that moment. It was the revelation of 
 love, and it made me afraid. 
 
 Suddenly you held out your arms; and 
 from your lips, with a low, full resonance that 
 only an absolutely- virgin passion gives, 
 leaped but one word: 
 
 " Beloved !" 
 
 It reached me where I stood, and struck 
 with all its might upon the tense chords of my
 
 46 Cup^to^ne anD 
 
 being. Everything was forgotten but the 
 sound of that word. I passed swiftly across 
 the room and knelt at your feet, weeping and 
 sobbing excessively. And that was our love- 
 making ! 
 
 As I write I feel once more the gentle 
 touch of your hand upon my head, the thrill 
 of your fingers among my hair as you soothed 
 and comforted me. Then gradually the 
 tears ceased and my voice was given back to 
 me, and we spake one to the other as only 
 lovers can speak. Nay ! Euphrosyne, I 
 shall not set down all our speech here. Into 
 those four wonderful hours no eyes shall 
 dare pry; no ears shall dare listen save His 
 who, touching our hearts with His compas- 
 sionate finger, attuned them to His own 
 rare music. We found love beautiful, you 
 and I, wholly beautiful, and we were sat- 
 isfied. 
 
 At first we were singularly grave, and held 
 deliberate conference regarding our future; 
 then dismissed it, as we thought, finally. 
 Love was setting her crown upon our brow, 
 you said, and she would justify herself at the 
 last, being greater than all things else. I
 
 13006" 47 
 
 suggested immediate marriage, proposing to 
 take you away to the warmer South, where, I 
 professed to you, health and strength might 
 be regained. 
 
 " Oh, so my new doctor would begin by 
 deceiving me, would he? the foolish, loving 
 man !" you said, taking my face in both your 
 beautiful hands and kissing my brow. " And 
 why marry, my ever beloved? Will the 
 love between thee and me increase in holi- 
 ness and beauty by marriage ? Well, then, 
 let us marry ! If not, let us stay as now we 
 are, betrothed in soul, until the end; leaving 
 the rest with God, in whose hands we are and 
 by whose grace we love." 
 
 So the matter was dismissed. Meanwhile, 
 there was the sea, the sunshine, the rocks, 
 and our love. The black cloud might or 
 might not be already forming somewhere 
 beyond our horizon, but why create a cloud 
 for ourselves? It must come some day, and 
 we would be all the readier to enter it if we 
 refused now to scan the distance apprehen- 
 sively. Look at the sea heaving gently out 
 there, gladsome, shimmering, musical: our 
 life was like that, you said ; let us be glad in
 
 48 uplro$ne anti 
 
 it and not fear. Besides, there could be no 
 waste in love, and God was good. 
 
 Later, when the little maid had brought in 
 the tea, how joyous and delightfully frivolous 
 our talk grew ! I could even tease you for 
 that you had called me " beloved " first, and 
 had kissed me first. So we talked and 
 laughed, and your laughter was as the laugh- 
 ter of the great forest-trees when the sun 
 warms the dew at their roots. It was the 
 music of pure joy and gladness. Yea, truly 
 did we enter into each other's joy on that 
 evening of our betrothal, and our own joy 
 was fulfilled. Then I remember, as we sat 
 by the window afterwards, saying something, 
 half seriously, about the brevity of our ac- 
 quaintance, throwing some allusive doubt on 
 the reality of our knowledge of each other. 
 
 " Nay," you answered, with a gathering 
 solemnity in your voice, as though I had hurt 
 you. " Nay, do not speak so. Are years 
 of mere acquaintance necessary to enable 
 us to gain an intimacy of understanding ? Is 
 it not at least possible that souls may be 
 meant for each other though born far apart? 
 And if chance and time bring such souls
 
 f er "d&otten OBoofc" 49 
 
 together, may there not be a certain inward 
 and instant recognition, however dim, of 
 their spiritual kinship? It is an old belief, 
 and I do not profess to understand it, but I 
 am not so much of a modern as not to 
 believe that it is surely possible. They may 
 never marry may even marry otherwise ; 
 but across the gulf that an evil fate has 
 stretched, that recognition may flash and life 
 be ever afterwards more sacred because of 
 that instant's illumination. At least I can- 
 not do aught but believe it now." 
 
 Then you quoted the following lines of 
 Rossetti's. Ah ! if only I could put the 
 light of your eyes into them, how many 
 lovers would read them to each other ! 
 
 " Even so, when first I saw you, seemed it, love, 
 
 That among souls allied to mine was yet- 
 One nearer kindred than life hinted of. 
 
 O born with me somewhere that men forget, 
 And though in years of sight and sound unmet, 
 Known for my soul's birth-partner well enough !" 
 
 I made you go over them again and again 
 for the sheer pleasure I had in listening to 
 your voice. Then you got down the volume
 
 50 
 
 from a set of high shelves by the window 
 and read- many of those intimate sonnets of 
 "The House of Life" some of them 
 almost too intimate and precious to be read 
 and criticised by the vulgar crowd ; but read 
 there, and interpreted by our immediate ex- 
 periences, how convincing and satisfying they 
 were ! 
 
 So the evening drew its sable curtains about 
 us, as we talked, and read, and laughed, till 
 the moment of separation came. For a few 
 precious moments we spake once more of 
 the first things, things of the heart, eternally 
 memorable: such things as all true lovers, 
 and alas, some false ones, speak to each other 
 whenever the earth lies in sympathetic still- 
 ness and the place to whisper "Good night" 
 has been reached. Then you sent me away 
 night's brood of stars watching us as we 
 kissed by the unshuttered window. 
 
 This was but our second meeting, yet 
 love had cast her spell over us, and for 
 better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sick- 
 ness or in health, we had entered into her 
 kingdom together; there to abide till death 
 and afterwards.
 
 Love's 
 Dishonouring
 
 53 
 
 Love's 
 Dishonouring 
 
 T seemed to me 
 that night as I 
 walked slowly 
 back to the 
 hotel that I had 
 crossed more in- 
 visible boun- 
 daries than ever 
 the curious 
 Walden philos- 
 opher's imagination had pictured for him. 
 Truly, my feet were at last in the daisied 
 valley of love, I thought, and in a little while 
 the great white hills would flash their glory 
 before my eyes hills up whose fragrant sides 
 you and I would climb together, greeting 
 with sweet amazement the unimagined beau- 
 ties of our new kingdom. Yet four brief
 
 54 (EupIjtoiEtyne and 
 
 days had scarcely come and gone before I 
 knew that I had dishonoured love in some 
 shameless and wanton way. 
 
 There must be the beginnings of vision 
 in us if we are to see the least things in the 
 kingdom of love, you told me one day. 
 But I had never seen love before, never felt 
 her presence, nor understood her subtle min- 
 istries, and that night her revelation dazzled 
 me, blinded me, filled me with an ecstasy 
 that was three parts pain ; and it unfitted me 
 for the sudden parting which faced me in 
 the morning. Do you remember, Euphros- 
 yne, how you told me when I came back 
 to you, ashamed and sad, that no man was 
 capable of pure felicity; and that the gray 
 mist of melancholy and doubt, which was 
 only finally dispelled when once more I 
 looked upon you, was cast over me by a 
 gracious Hand to hold me to the earth? 
 It was so like you to say that! Yet this 
 chapter must tell how little I deserved to 
 look upon the shining face of love, and how 
 her forgiveness renews the spirit of man. 
 
 My sleep was filled with wondrous visions
 
 55 
 
 of fair faces and shining eyes that suddenly 
 flashed out of the thick darkness upon me, 
 and as suddenly vanished: an endless pro- 
 cession of dissolving views, vague and imma- 
 terial. Face after face came and went; at last 
 one stayed. It was still and white, with closed 
 eyes and sad, compressed lips; and somehow 
 I knew that all the others I had seen were 
 now as nothing to me beside that dead, inex- 
 pressive face that stared so terribly behind the 
 closed eyelids. I must have been half-awake, 
 for I knew where I was, and lay fascinated by 
 the awful immobility of that white mask which 
 gleamed in the dark. I became conscious 
 of a passionate yearning to create life and 
 motion. If only those eyes would open and 
 those lips lose their painful rigidity, I be- 
 lieved that I would fully awake, and that the 
 cold paralysis which was creeping slowly over 
 my limbs and heart would pass away. Then 
 I grew aware of an almost imperceptible move- 
 ment; the lips trembled, the eyes opened 
 slowly, and then the face sprang into ex- 
 quisite life, and one word filled the room 
 with a sound as of low, sweet music. The 
 face was yours, and the word was yours,
 
 56 Cup^ro^ne and 
 
 and both faded softly away, and I dropped 
 into a profound dreamless sleep. 
 
 When I came down to breakfast the next 
 morning with that wonderful vision still fresh 
 in my heart, I found a telegram, which felt 
 like a piece of ice in my ringers when I had 
 read it. I was needed in the city immedi- 
 ately, to be present at a delicate operation 
 which would take place early the next day. 
 It meant being away for two whole days and 
 parts of two more. Four days absent from 
 you, and yesterday only a few hours away! 
 I would not go I could not go they 
 must get some one to take my place at the 
 hospital. I had not yet learned, what after- 
 wards you taught me, that the beauty and 
 strength of love lay in her exactions and 
 not in her consolations. I even fell so far 
 as to write a reply saying that I could not 
 leave. I thrust it into my pocket, and sat 
 down to my breakfast with a cool self- 
 satisfaction that humbles me still in the 
 memory of it. Half an hour afterwards I left 
 the hotel, with the intention of sending the 
 telegram myself. But turning unconsciously 
 towards the white gate, which stood in the
 
 Soften I3ooir 57 
 
 opposite direction, I was already within sight 
 of your cottage before I became aware of the 
 way I had taken. Well ! I would go on ; 
 it could be sent afterwards. 
 
 It is strange to me to-day to remember 
 that when I saw you that early morning 
 standing among your currant-bushes, with 
 the glory of the sun falling on your uncovered 
 head, I felt no thrill of shame for what I intend- 
 ed to do. Surely, my momentary degradation 
 could not have been more complete! I had 
 fallen, as I was to fall again, because I under- 
 stood not love nor her ways. 
 
 "You are abroad early," I cried, over the 
 white gate. 
 
 I can still see the quick uplift of your fair 
 head, and the radiance of the smile that cut 
 me like a lancet. You had to be about 
 the things of your Father early, you said, 
 for evil was never far from God's choicest 
 fruits. 
 
 Ah! was not evil close to me at that 
 moment? And I I was no choice fruit 
 of God. 
 
 "I have to go," I began; then stammered 
 confusedly. " I mean . . . this came to
 
 58 Cup^rogime ana 
 
 me a little while ago." And I handed you 
 the telegram. 
 
 Your face paled slightly as you read it; 
 then you looked up at me with that ever brave 
 smile. But before you could speak " I 
 I can get a substitute," I said, and knew 
 immediately the full meanness of my words. 
 
 " Oh, my beloved ! " you cried, with an 
 inexpressible dismay in your voice which 
 haunted me for many an hour. 
 
 You led me into the cottage as though 
 I were a little child, and there I told you 
 of the temptation that had gripped me so 
 sorely. You would not believe that I had 
 really intended staying behind. Such love as 
 ours could not so shame our souls, you said. 
 It was only passion that was selfish. Love 
 transfigured the human soul, making it aware 
 of its highest function to serve. It could 
 not be from God if it caused us to forget 
 the rest of the Father's children in the love 
 of one. That might be love as man fashioned 
 it; but it was not the love that was ours yester- 
 day, that was ours still. There was a great 
 sentence in " Marius," which was a sort 
 of watchword to you, and had proved highly
 
 13006" 59 
 
 effective in the direction of unselfishness. 
 Did I not remember it? I ought to bind it 
 to my heart. " He must satisfy with a kind 
 of sacred equity, he must be very cautious 
 not to be wanting to the claims of others 
 in their joys and calamities." And no great 
 love had come to Marius when he said that. 
 Ought not we to be as far above him in our 
 conceptions of duty as he was above the 
 common crowd? To love one in such a man- 
 ner that it overflowed in spontaneous ser- 
 vice to all who needed it most that, you 
 thought, was to show one's self a true lover. 
 So you talked that morning, tenderly, ca- 
 ressingly; and I was cleansed through your 
 word. Then you kissed me on my lips and 
 on my eyes and bade me go. You would 
 count the hours and then the minutes till 
 you saw me again. 
 
 The operation was a brilliant success, but 
 in fear of some unknown complication it was 
 considered necessary that I should remain 
 another day in the city, and during that 
 time my soul sank into the Hades of shame 
 and contempt. My brain had been too
 
 60 uro0ne ant) 
 
 actively employed on the morning of the 
 operation to leave any chance opening for 
 the entrance of morbid thoughts ; but when 
 the strain relaxed, and I took a stroll into 
 the streets late in the evening, an indefinable 
 sense of forsakenness took possession of me, 
 body and soul. The city had lost all its 
 former attraction for me ; I longed only for 
 the sea. But the horror of it was that I 
 could not bring before my mind any clear 
 picture of the sea. My experiences of the 
 last few days fell into a blurred, ineffectual 
 mass of unrelated things, out of which no 
 single thing stood defined. I lost your face 
 absolutely among the jostling, eager, un- 
 spiritual men and women who crowded the 
 pavement. Try as I would, your shining 
 eyes and wonderful hair eluded me, and with 
 the fading of vision came an inquietude and 
 doubt, vague and uncertain at first, but gath- 
 ering volume and poignancy as the shadows 
 of night fell around me. A pillar of cloud 
 stood between me and the past, into which I 
 longed so piteously to return ; and that face 
 in the past for which I yearned most was 
 wholly hidden from me.
 
 I3oo6" 61 
 
 The coward that seems always to be lurk- 
 ing somewhere within me conquered the 
 man, and the awful thought grew upon me 
 that you were unreal, a mere creature of my 
 imagination. I had never been away from 
 this pitiless city, and the things that had 
 seemed so true were but the tedious vagaries 
 of a tired brain. I had loved something that 
 was nothing a strange, white shadow, a pro- 
 jection of subconsciousness. Some gleam- 
 ing angel had touched me with her wings in 
 my dreams, but had left no witnessing 
 feather behind her. I held nothing that 
 would materialize, and the sense of unreality 
 was more appallingly real than the actual 
 men and women who rushed eagerly past 
 me in the dark. How could such wonder- 
 ful things as I had fancied be true? How 
 could such a face as I had seen in my dreams 
 shine out from among those hard and unlit 
 countenances I now saw ? Oh, my Euphros- 
 yne, truly I had lost you, and in your place 
 were those haggard men and women, worn 
 and soiled with the evil of the world. 
 
 If one had asked of me two days before, 
 if a man could look upon your face, then go
 
 62 Curone and 
 
 away and so soon forget what manner of 
 face he had looked upon, I would have 
 thought that questioner -insane. But there 
 was I, who had not only seen, but who had 
 held your dear face in my hands, walking 
 those streets a prey for every evil spirit 
 abroad, and utterly unable to vision for my- 
 self the best beloved among the daughters 
 of God. And all the while you were in 
 your cottage counting the hours till I re- 
 turned. 
 
 The next day, all that turbulent gloom 
 passed into another, and to me a more delir- 
 ious, phase. Perhaps I was not wholly re- 
 sponsible for my inability to see you amid 
 surroundings that appeared so alien, but 
 what shall I say of the doubt and terror that 
 now possessed me? There is no plea, there 
 are no words, that I might urge in my favour. 
 I ought to have known you, and it is my 
 lasting shame that I did not. Ah ! dear 
 Lady of Joy, forgive me again, as you once 
 forgave. Your face now shone before me in 
 the city streets, making even the cruel faces 
 I encountered seem less repulsive. And 
 thus gazing upon you I doubted you ! Oh,
 
 " 
 
 d&olfcen OBoofc" 6 3 
 
 that withering doubt, that most evil of all 
 evil things ; and that shining face to which I 
 could not attain ! Yea, it seemed more aloof 
 from me now than yesterday, when I could 
 not see it because I doubted, and there is 
 no beatific communion for the doubter. My 
 own love was still passionate and simple 
 that I knew; but you, I thought, you must 
 have found out the mistake of it all by this 
 time. I had pressed my love, nay, imposed 
 it on you, so eager and tempestuous it had 
 proved; and the wind, the sea, the whole 
 circumstances of our meeting, had conspired 
 together to make you dream of love. But 
 now I was here in the dreary city, no longer 
 sitting by the great chair of love, and it must 
 needs be that now you regretted the won- 
 derful things you had said to me. I could 
 see the compassionate self-reproach in your 
 beautiful eyes ; and the brooding horror of 
 the desolateness of a long future robbed of 
 the love which I had rashly claimed as mine 
 filled my very being to the exclusion of all 
 else. God knows that I would have faced 
 cheerfully, at any moment of that day, the 
 direst calamity that could have wrecked my
 
 64 Bup^rogime ana 
 
 life, if only I could have regained my belief 
 in your love for me. But as I had lost you 
 yesterday, now I had lost the very conscious- 
 ness that you loved me, and the burden 
 seemed to grow greater than I could bear. 
 But oh, the shame of it all was so much 
 greater, only it did not descend upon me till 
 the burden lifted: so manifold are the mer- 
 cies of God. 
 
 Some time later in the day I wandered into 
 the poor parts of the city, and entered the 
 cathedral, which seemed to flaunt its grandeur 
 as a perpetual challenge to the squalor and 
 poverty and vice clustering around it, even 
 to the very doors. I sat down, weary and 
 dejected, listening with only half my mind at 
 first to the music of the organ/ Gradually 
 it seemed to draw nearer to me, encompassing 
 me and soothing my troubled spirit. Just a 
 faint sound as of the melody of breaking sea- 
 waves floated down the long dim aisles. Was 
 it an indicant of the richer, fuller melody of 
 days yet to dawn? I could not tell, and 
 scarcely knew what I desired ; but I left the 
 cathedral, if not at rest, at least no longer 
 actively doubting. It was not that I had
 
 6 5 
 
 regained any saner or nobler thoughts, for 
 I still believed that some unique sorrow 
 awaited me on the morrow, but I had ceased 
 to argue with myself. 
 
 When the morrow did come, it found me 
 more restless and troubled than ever. The 
 despondency and unbelief gained rapidly on 
 me as the train drew near its destination. I 
 seemed travelling to my doom, yet none the 
 less longed feverishly for the journey's end. 
 And when at last I stepped out upon the 
 platform, and saw you standing there with 
 welcoming eyes, and eager hands stretched 
 out in greeting, I scarce could look upon you 
 for shamefacedness. I had doubted love, wan- 
 tonly thought all ill of her, and she herself 
 stood there the first to greet me ! 
 
 " The time has been long," you said. 
 
 " Aye, my love, very long," I answered. 
 
 An hour afterwards we were once more 
 together on the rocks watching the sea, and 
 as we watched I told you, little by little, with 
 many bitter pauses, the story of my shame 
 how I had first lost you, then, having found 
 you again, distrusted you ; how all love seemed
 
 66 (Eurogne anD 
 
 dishonoured in my doubt. But you would not 
 let me call it distrust, so full of gracious love 
 and queenly truth were you. It was the direct 
 outcome of the mental strain I had been 
 under, you said, and the sudden contrast 
 between the free, open life by the sea and 
 that suffocating city. I would in time have 
 stood clear of the cloud, you thought, with- 
 out any aid of sight. Love was some- 
 thing so unfathomable that no man knew the 
 secret of her ways, but she would surely have 
 found a channel for expression, some mode 
 of manifesting herself which would have 
 scattered forever all my untrue thoughts of 
 her. 
 
 Only once that afternoon did you let me 
 feel any sense of the pain throbbing behind 
 your words. It was when you asked me how 
 I could have thought that love could ever 
 die. It was the involuntary cry of a gentle 
 soul under peculiar torture, but it passed as 
 quickly as it had come. Love must be im- 
 mortal, you said, or how could it ever have 
 been one of the grand names of God. Be- 
 sides, was it not eternally unsatisfied, ever 
 yearning and striving for greater perfection
 
 13oo6" 6 7 
 
 and closer completeness in the soul upon 
 which it alighted? No mere mortal thing 
 knew such pain of aspiration as love knew. 
 So many writers spoke of love as if it could 
 have fixed boundaries in time and unsettled 
 resting-places. They made their men and 
 women join hands and lives with the ex- 
 pressed agreement that when love should die 
 or change in either, then they would go their 
 separate ways. That was to place an infinite 
 name upon a finite passion. Love manifest- 
 ing itself under human conditions must still 
 be divine, and after the power of an indisso- 
 luble life. Much of the misery of mankind, 
 you thought, arose from the making of a 
 distinction, where no distinction was, between 
 human and divine love. 
 
 As I listened to you that afternoon, though 
 almost every word you spoke scorched me, 
 even when it healed me, I had gladness in 
 my doubts, because they drew out from you 
 the deepest and purest thoughts of your 
 soul. There was an unconscious change 
 of the pronoun in some later expressions 
 of yours which seemed to me to give an 
 added significance to all your thought. I
 
 68 Curone and 
 
 had wondered at your knowledge of the 
 ways of love, and you said it was not know- 
 ledge, but a dim groping after it. No one 
 could really know what the inmost soul of 
 love was, for then God would stand fully 
 disclosed. We could only catch glimpses of 
 her here and there, swift manifestations of her 
 presence, but what she was in herself was hid- 
 den in the very being of God. Even the 
 finest poetry only dimly apprehended her 
 surpassing glory. Love the Father had 
 kept in His own hands, and her complete 
 revelation was reserved for the future. I 
 remember saying, with some shallow petu- 
 lance, that preachers were always bidding us 
 wait for the thing we desired most until we 
 stood at last in the presence of God, and 
 now you were taking your place beside them. 
 Not quite beside them, you thought, for you 
 drew no fatal line between life and death. 
 You were as much in the presence of God 
 at that moment by the sea as you ever ex- 
 pected to be at any other time. You hoped 
 to know more of God, as you hoped to know 
 more of love, but both were around you, 
 ever present with you. The future would
 
 Soften Xoofe" 6 9 
 
 only make a difference in human comprehen- 
 sion or insight, not in fact. 
 
 How strange and aloof seemed much of 
 your talk to me then! How little I entered 
 into the deeper meaning of it all, or appre- 
 hended the true beautiful soul of you ! 
 Many years were to pass away before I saw 
 what you always saw, that love and God, 
 life and death, were only different manifes- 
 tations of the same spirit. 
 
 As we walked homeward along the cliffs, the 
 sun gently sank behind the far marge of the 
 sea. Men spoke of the sun as dying, you said, 
 when it had only passed beyond our present 
 vision. All death, so terrible to the thought 
 of most men, was only like that. You were 
 glad to be alive upon the earth, glad to walk 
 there with me by the shore, to listen to the 
 waves, and to gather fresh flowers, to answer 
 love with more love; but death also was a 
 beautiful thing, for it was one of the ways 
 the Father had chosen by which His chil- 
 dren should find an entrance into a fuller 
 life of knowledge and sweet service. 
 
 I could not answer those thoughts of 
 yours, for my soul was too sorrowful, and the
 
 70 
 
 dishonour of my doubt lay still too heavily 
 upon me. And as I looked into your face, 
 the last rays of the sun falling fitfully upon 
 it, a great awe and wonder stilled the beat- 
 ing of my heart, for it seemed to me that 
 already the mortal had begun to put on im- 
 mortality.
 
 The "Golden 
 Book"
 
 73 
 
 The "Golden 
 Book" 
 
 HE next few 
 weeks, until the 
 seventh day of 
 September, were 
 weeks of pure 
 felicity, wherein 
 our dual life 
 reached its 
 height. The 
 bright, warm 
 days saw us at our favourite rocks, or on the 
 sea, or in the little garden, or driving into the 
 country, so healthily fragrant just at that time 
 with all ripening things. But at any hint of 
 nature turning cold you would stay within the 
 cottage, and I would come to you. Thus the 
 wonderful days went by, each adding its own 
 offering to the general sum of joy. In our
 
 74 Cup^rojetytte and 
 
 own manner we imitated Marius in our en- 
 deavour "to be perfect with regard to what 
 was here and now," doing no disservice to 
 our sweet communion by permitting foolish 
 thoughts of future trouble to tarry long with 
 us. How pure and strong was your love, 
 Euphrosyne ! H ow aboundi ng in tender con- 
 solations and unexpected felicities ! 
 
 Out of all those beautiful days, one here 
 and one there holds for me a beauty or a 
 memory clinging to itself alone. It was the 
 day after my return from the city that we 
 commenced to read together " Marius the 
 Epicurean." Much rain had fallen during 
 the night, and as we strolled along the shore 
 to our sheltered place among the rocks, the 
 moorland steamed beneath the hot sun ; and 
 that singular smell of sea-air and drying 
 earth associates itself still with the reading 
 of that day. 
 
 We read slowly, with much lingering to 
 seize the beauty of expression, much digging 
 into the roots of words to get the full force 
 of them as they were before modern usage 
 had robbed them of their meanings, so that 
 they might become to us what they were to
 
 75 
 
 the mind of Walter Pater when he chose 
 them. And we read with very little of a 
 pause till far into the glorious afternoon. 
 
 I remember that the delicate, reticent 
 chapters concerning Flavian started you on 
 a monologue about the much abused style. 
 You had great delight in reading it for the 
 sake of the beautiful prose, apart altogether 
 from its teaching. Even the involved sen- 
 tences, with their too frequent parenthetical 
 clauses had for you a certain fitness and pre- 
 ciousness of their own. They wrought in 
 you an exquisite sense of leisure, of ample 
 time, amid a bustling, hurrying world, you 
 said. The aesthetic qualities on this page 
 and on that indicating, among others, as 
 passages most recently read, the description 
 of White Nights, the temple among the hills 
 of Etruria, the story of Cupid and Psyche, 
 and the " sacred day" of I sis had a charm 
 and fragrance not to be found in any other 
 writing known to you. Was not Mr. Pater like 
 Flavian in this respect, that he too was " an 
 ardent, indefatigable student of words, of the 
 means or instrument of the literary art" ? 
 Every true and beautiful word seemed to you
 
 76 Cup^ro^ne anD 
 
 an intellectual enrichment, opening windows 
 that looked out across wide stretches of liter- 
 ary landscape and seascape would I allow 
 the latter expression, seeing there was so 
 much of it before us ? delighting the mind 
 with hitherto unexpected lovelinesses. How 
 Mr. Pater gave the precise sometimes, also, 
 it proved a restored significance to each 
 word; taking his art with a deep seriousness 
 that was mentally bracing ! Yes (this in an- 
 swer to a provocative question), he might be 
 called a Euphuist, but he was not to be 
 classed with the Elizabethans, who gloried in 
 the name. There was no arbitrary forcing of 
 words merely made exigent by rhyme and 
 metre in poetry, or by rhythm in prose, as 
 might be seen in the older work, and in that 
 of some moderns who imagined they were 
 imitating the prose of " Marius." Such 
 a use or should it be abuse ? of words, 
 when not in harmony with at least the abid- 
 ing spirit of our language, was pedantry or 
 affectation, and no enrichment, but rather a 
 despoliation which every true lover of letters 
 would strive scrupulously to avoid. There 
 was a conspicuous literary sincerity through-
 
 Soften I3oo6" 77 
 
 out " Marius," which, except at rare inter- 
 vals, kept Mr. Pater true to whatever matter 
 he had in hand. The whole chapter on 
 " Euphuism" you considered to be a con- 
 fession of his own most exalted convictions 
 on the art of literature. And a conscientious 
 study of it would reveal his attitude toward 
 life and letters. 
 
 Later in the evening I said something 
 about the apparent futility of such a life as 
 Marius had conceived for himself; that, for 
 all his beautiful ideas and sensations, he had 
 accomplished very little, if anything, with his 
 life. But you said that the simple presence 
 of so gentle and speculative a soul must have 
 been a powerful, even if a silent, inspiration 
 to those with whom he companied, and also 
 to many who only chanced to look upon 
 him as he passed them on his way. A man 
 might live, and live a fairly useful life, as 
 the world weighed usefulness, without much 
 thought, but it was impossible that a man 
 should think as Marius thought without 
 living to some purpose. It was not the 
 actual things done or said in a lifetime that 
 seemed to you the most valuable, but the
 
 78 cBup^ro^ne anD 
 
 whole being, the invisible, unfathomable 
 heart of the man, which was often much more 
 beautiful and godlike than any particular 
 speech or deed. The soul appeared as created 
 anew within the man who habitually cherished 
 beautiful and noble thoughts, and a superior 
 soul must, consciously or unconsciously, in- 
 fluence beneficently the world in which it 
 shone. 
 
 I do not now remember in what manner 
 I drew you into sweet speech concerning 
 yourself, but you told me that you had tried 
 to live strenuously, because some one had 
 long ago taunted you with being a dreamer 
 of beautiful dreams that never actualized; 
 but your attempts had come to as little as 
 your dreams. You had never done anything 
 with your life. (Oh, my Euphrosyne !) As 
 far back as you could see you had always 
 been what now you were a woman from 
 whom the active side of life had been com- 
 pletely cut off. Once you had even enter- 
 tained a passionate hope of being able to 
 put on record the lovely thoughts that had 
 come to you unsought, but the art of words 
 was not yours. The moment you tried to
 
 " 
 
 d&ol&en I3oofc" 79 
 
 fix it, to give it a body, the thought, which 
 had been so much to you the moment be- 
 fore, became an airy nothing for which there 
 were no words. Oh, yes; you could share 
 your deepest thoughts with me, but that was be- 
 cause love vaulted the unseen but real barriers 
 that kept human souls apart, and we loved. 
 
 And a strange thing happened here which 
 I know not rightly how to tell. You were 
 sitting at my feet on a large, soft cushion that 
 we had brought from the cottage, and I on a 
 bowlder which formed a sort of footstool for 
 the chair of love. Upon your upturned 
 face rested that wonderful light which always 
 so stilled and awed me, as if I were in the 
 presence of some mysterious intelligence from 
 another world, when suddenly as I gazed 
 upon you I saw those dear shining eyes fill 
 with tears. In a moment I was down on the 
 sand by your side, with my arms about you 
 and your head on my bosom. I think the 
 remembrance of the past, of what you had 
 yearned to do with your life, and of all its 
 apparent failure, had brought a desolating 
 sense of how soon it was to come to an end 
 here. For after a little while you told me
 
 8o 
 
 that the love that had come so unexpectedly 
 into your life had filled you with a longing 
 for a little more time and a little more 
 strength to learn its great meaning and to 
 pay its demands. 
 
 " Oh, but I would live, dear," you said, 
 looking at me once more, " for now you 
 have come, . . . and ... I have seen 
 love and yet must die." 
 
 It was the only time in those wonderful 
 weeks that regret found any voice in you; and 
 now after all these years the pure humanness 
 of it is to me a most precious remembrance. 
 
 And when afterwards, as I shall have to 
 tell, my own turn came and came again a 
 passionate, tempestuous rebellion you were 
 to me as the voice of God, for you had 
 fought the same battle and had won. But 
 you could never have been so patient, so 
 compassionately tender, so full of dear conso- 
 lation and grace, if you had not known for that 
 brief moment the agony of incompleteness. 
 
 There is another morning and evening 
 that gleam out of the past upon me as I sit 
 here by my desk writing of you and the
 
 81 
 
 " Golden Book." One morning, about a 
 fortnight after we began the reading of 
 " Marius," we had driven several miles along 
 a wide, white road which led us into the 
 heart of the surrounding country, when we 
 came suddenly upon a forest of inconsider- 
 able extent, but abounding with wild flowers 
 and dark ferns. For two hours we wandered 
 beneath the trees, now hand in hand, now 
 stopping to gather ferns and flowers, now 
 resting a moment on the dry trunk of some 
 long since uprooted tree, until we had our 
 fill of the new joy which the morning had 
 brought us. There had been no mention of 
 books all that time, but I remember it was 
 on the way back that the conversation drifted 
 to " Marius." You spoke of the industrious 
 care with which Mr. Pater elaborated his 
 characters, and I learned how deeply you 
 detested merely clever writing the preten- 
 tious essaying of those who would pack a 
 character into an epigram and think they had 
 done literature a service, as you said. How 
 delicately and gradually the characters in 
 " Marius" evolved themselves ! It was only 
 through the curious combination of word and
 
 82 cCutDne and 
 
 deed and circumstance, each bringing its 
 distinct and individual revelation, that at 
 last the men and women Marius, Flavian, 
 Cornelius, Marcus Aurelius, Faustina, Cece- 
 lia stood clearly out of their historic, 
 shadowy surroundings ; but once they did 
 appear, it was unmistakable, unforgettable, of 
 what sort they were. Was not that the only 
 genuine method of portraiture? It was the 
 recognition, so you thought, on the part of 
 the artist, or, if I liked, the historian, that the 
 true revelation of character was not to be 
 found in one act or peculiarity, but in differ- 
 ing acts widely apart, and in the contradictory 
 circumstances which together constituted a 
 life of any moment. How gradually the rev- 
 elation of the deeper elements in the char- 
 acter of Marcus Aurelius came a revelation 
 causing Marius deliberately to reverse his 
 first judgments ! Always recognizing the 
 sentiment surrounding the emperor as one 
 of mediocrity, it had seemed to him, during 
 early acquaintance, to be a " mediocrity for 
 once really golden." Then little by little a 
 saying, a definite act or an indifferent acqui- 
 escence in another's act, by light cast swiftly
 
 "Soften I3oo6" 8 3 
 
 now upon this, now upon that side of his 
 character, Marius reached his final judgment, 
 that although it was still a mediocrity it was 
 a "mediocrity no longer golden"; a gray, 
 stained, ugly mediocrity, little removed from 
 the baser sentiments of the vulgar populace 
 who accorded him his tawdry " triumph." 
 That was one of the triumphs of the " Golden 
 Book," you thought. 
 
 It was on the evening of the same day that 
 I caught other and more precious glimpses 
 of the joyous soul that had linked itself 
 to mine. We were in that chaste, fragrant 
 room, become now so sacred to us because 
 of our first kiss. Inevitably our speech had 
 flown back to the hours of the morning and 
 their gift of gladness. I had said some fool- 
 ish thing or other about the brevity of all 
 joy; that the hours were gone now, being 
 things of the past, never to return again, un- 
 less, indeed, as a kind of desolating remem- 
 brance. And I quoted Tennyson's echo of 
 Dante and Chaucer as a buttress for my per- 
 verse mood of pessimism 
 
 " That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remember- 
 ing happier things."
 
 84 c^up^ro^ne ann 
 
 " Nay, my dear love ! " you cried, as you 
 came and crouched at my feet on the rug, 
 and laid your hands caressingly on mine. 
 " How precisely and stupidly wrong such a 
 sentiment is, in spite of the trio of great 
 poets who have indorsed it ! A really beau- 
 tiful day never ends. There can be no least 
 taint of mortality in a single moment that 
 has once breathed full of joy. The glory 
 of that splendid experience will live on, ful- 
 filling its own peculiar function, and through 
 the saddest of after hours saving the spirit 
 from final despair. It shall be a remem- 
 brance of hope, not of desolation." 
 
 You were gazing straight into my eyes, 
 and as I looked down upon that dear face I 
 saw a wistful sadness steal into it, the tender 
 lips quiver for ever so brief an instant ; and 
 I knew your thoughts were with the dead. 
 By and by you spoke again, in a voice so 
 subdued and melodic that it was as though 
 it came across the sea. 
 
 "I remember once, it is years ago now, 
 staying with my father in a little town in 
 Wharfedale. It was summer; and one 
 night, as we so much loved to do for my
 
 85 
 
 mother had died soon after my birth, and 
 father and I were everything to each other 
 we strolled to the very outskirts of the 
 town. We soon left the dusty road and 
 clambered over some low wooden railings 
 into an old plantation which led us to the 
 banks of the lovely river. It was a perfect 
 night, and we stood watching the crystal circle 
 round the moon grow radiant with fantastic 
 fires. The murmur of the river in front of 
 us and the slight whispering of the trees 
 behind us had a steadying effect upon our 
 spirits indescribable. When suddenly it 
 seemed that the shivering music of the wood 
 died away, and the very river lay hushed 
 and listening; then out of the great stillness 
 sprang a most exquisite song. It was the 
 first and only time I ever heard a nightin- 
 gale. How he sang ! Hidden quite out of 
 sight, he poured forth a flood of rich melody 
 to his distant mate, as though he knew full 
 well that somewhere, also out of sight, she 
 could hear and interpret his message. It 
 was like some old-world melody that would 
 fain call the wandering spirit home, lest it 
 should lose the mystic meanings informing
 
 86 Curosnc and 
 
 the soul of common things. My father said, 
 in his poetic way, that it was the unseen 
 choirs from the stars, who lived their spheral 
 music all day long, that had dropped at last 
 to the earth and now sang their strange star- 
 songs imprisoned in the soul of that one 
 night-bird. I have never heard anything to 
 be compared to it since; but that night I 
 was docile and receptive, and the song has 
 stayed with me, allaying by the sweetness 
 of its enchantments the turbulence and pas- 
 sion of every-day life. Ah, my beloved ! I 
 have known days of darkness and weariness, 
 days of worry and vain strife, days even of 
 cowardice and sloth, when the memory of 
 that song, sung so long ago, has broken in 
 on my morbid thought with its revelations of 
 exalted purity, of aspiration, and of achieve- 
 ment!" 
 
 You were silent for some time, occupied 
 with thoughts of the past, and as I gazed at 
 you I remembered how God seemed, to my 
 dim understanding, to have dealt hardly with 
 you, and I wondered much. But all that I 
 could say then was that I did not under- 
 stand, knowing the great sorrow of your
 
 life, how you had retained such a simple joy- 
 ousness of spirit. As you raised your face 
 I saw once again that pure and marvellous 
 light playing upon it, as though already you 
 stood at the foot of God's throne. It was 
 such a light as the sorrow-stricken Dante 
 must have seen in the face of the " compas- 
 sionate lady" who looked out of the window 
 upon him as he walked, and consoled him. 
 
 " Our great Father never leaves us long in 
 the garish desert-places without some such 
 compassionate redemption as these few days 
 have brought to us," you said. "We could 
 not live our life steadily and wholesomely 
 without these occasional days of beauty, of 
 joyous fellowship, of hallowed communion : 
 days which become sweet and sacred mem- 
 ories, rendering fragrant the heaviest atmos- 
 phere. Some time in the future you will be 
 glad that this day and all the other days 
 have been. They will come back to you, 
 my dear heart, transformed into something 
 wonderfully refined and precious, altogether 
 surpassing your present so imperfect ap- 
 prehension." 
 
 So you talked, opening up to me a new
 
 and beautiful spiritual world, not wholly by 
 the actual words you spake, but by the evi- 
 dent experience and faith that lay securely 
 behind. And on returning to the hotel that 
 night my prayers proved unsatisfactory for 
 the unsuspected needs that were being awak- 
 ened in my soul ; and for the first time in 
 many years I abjured all formulas, never to 
 resort to them again, praying simply as those 
 needs prompted. For God was no longer 
 conceived as afar off in isolated splendour. 
 He had drawn strangely, intimately near in 
 the- last hours, and prayer became natural 
 and inevitable.
 
 Paradise 
 without a Serpent
 
 9 1 
 
 Paradise 
 without a Serpent 
 
 S the days sped 
 past with eager, 
 perfumed feet, 
 we lost all that 
 prescension of a 
 possible swift ap- 
 proach of sor- 
 row which had 
 at times, in spite 
 of us, laid sud- 
 den, chilly fingers on our lips and quieted 
 our joy during the earlier days of our sweet 
 fellowship. The sun, the wind, the sea, 
 and above all the immortal love that had 
 homed in your heart, seemed to have stimu- 
 lated a vitality, perhaps never quite sound, 
 into something very like health if not robust- 
 ness. And we were easily deceived; blindly
 
 92 cBup^ro^ne anD 
 
 believing what we longed to believe. As for 
 me, the grave love of you filled my whole 
 being, dominating every thought and desire. 
 Nature herself stayed amicably accordant with 
 our spirits, and the joy of living grew apace. 
 That dear delight in each other, that gracious 
 liberty of God's broad earth and broader sea, 
 the sun's warm caress, the fresh fragrance 
 of all outdoor things how delicious it all 
 was, how intoxicating! Yea, God was every- 
 where in those days, and it was as though 
 the great Adversary had forgotten us : leaving 
 us there in a Paradise without a serpent. 
 
 A part of each day was devoted to the 
 " Golden Book." We read leisurely but talked 
 much, not restrainingspeech monk-wise within 
 limits of the text. Nay ! for whatever might 
 be the beginning, the end would rise swiftly 
 and surely to thoughts concerning love: 
 what she was, how she came to us, and all 
 her goodly, soft ways and subtle winsome- 
 ness. For love to us was no weary, satiated 
 thing, grown old and wrinkled by years 
 of misuse and treachery, but virginal like 
 early spring, with eyes that shone as with 
 undried dews, and lips that laughed aloud
 
 Soften 13oofe" 93 
 
 in innocent mirth, and untroubled brow white 
 and clear, and arms that bore all manner 
 of precious fruits and flowers; and the fra- 
 grance of her breath was like the woods at 
 dawn. Yea,. love to us was the gift of God, 
 and right tenderly we cherished her. But no 
 words that may be written for the sons of men 
 to read can express the half of what love 
 brought to us, or of the wondrous speech 
 she taught you, my Euphrosyne. I must 
 stay content to set down your other words, 
 still treasuring in my heart those that always 
 followed. 
 
 We talked often of Marius himself: that 
 rare incarnation of whatever was choice in 
 the debased Epicureanism of his day 
 of his exclusive care for perfect harmony 
 of living and reflection of his genius for 
 friendship ; even Flavian not seeming so cor- 
 rupt in association with him and of his 
 great sincerities. 
 
 One beautiful morning when we were on 
 the rocks, you in your old place, the giant's 
 chair of love, and I in my old place, the 
 grass at your feet, you showed me the quota- 
 tion from Goethe that you had printed in
 
 94 Cupljrogime ant) 
 
 small, neat characters on the title-page of each 
 volume : 
 
 u lm Ganzen^ Guten^ Wahren resolut zu leben." 
 
 That was the meaning of the whole book, 
 you thought. If Marius had lived in the 
 age of Goethe, that sentence would have been 
 one of his most cherished watchwords. He 
 would have measured himself by it, and 
 Goethe also. We ought not to forget that 
 Marius was essentially all his life a poet. 
 It is a poet's conception, not a mere philoso- 
 pher's, that informs all his meditations. He 
 was never wholly Epicurean, not even in the 
 sense of Epicurus himself, but was rather an 
 eclectic in the midst of the varying philoso- 
 phies then much in vogue; choosing here 
 and rejecting there, always deliberately, after 
 due thought, and always with a true instinct 
 for what would prove a stimulus in the 
 direction of a perfect attainment. Certainly, 
 pleasure, to him, was not to be sought for 
 in any common, vulgar manner. The very 
 word had a different and higher significance 
 in the thought of Marius than it had in 
 that of his acknowledged philosophic master.
 
 95 
 
 The great end of living was "not pleasure 
 but fulness, completeness of life generally." 
 That was one of the weightiest axioms Marius 
 hugged close to his heart, and it already lifted 
 him far above Epicurus: making him critic 
 rather than pupil. He seemed always to 
 shrink, with a keen moral repugnance, from 
 everything that was dangerously incomplete, 
 however pleasant and inviting it might appear 
 for the moment. "To be perfect with re- 
 gard to what was here and now" yes, that 
 was his constant endeavour, but always with 
 a questioning of himself as to how this or 
 that would look in the maturity of his judg- 
 ment: as to what might be its "impression 
 for the memory." He never for a fleeting 
 moment, you said, lost that sincere recog- 
 nition of his responsibility towards others 
 which came to him so early in life. What 
 perfect moral insight went to the formation 
 of his judgment of the wicked indifference to 
 suffering of Marcus Aurelius during the glad- 
 iatorial games ! That impatience and indig- 
 nation at the tolerance of the "wise emperor" 
 was one of the grand moments in the career 
 of Marius. What a noble passage that was
 
 96 Cup^ro^ne anD 
 
 which summed up his final reflections on the 
 ghastly scene ! " Yes ; what was wanting was 
 the heart that would make it impossible to 
 witness all this; and the future would be 
 with the forces that could beget a heart like 
 that. His favourite philosophy had said, Trust 
 the eye; strive to be right always regard- 
 ing the concrete experience; never falsify 
 your impressions. And its sanction had been 
 at least effective here, in saying, It is what 
 I may not see! Surely evil was a real thing; 
 and the wise man wanting in the sense of it, 
 where not to have been, by instinctive elec- 
 tion, on the right side, was to have failed 
 in life." 
 
 This acceptance on the part of Marius 
 of the fundamental truths of the conscience, 
 you said, was what kept him erect through 
 all his experimenting with Epicureanism. 
 Such a definite consecration of himself to the 
 dictates of a conscience clean and wholesome 
 from childhood, such a "strong tendency to 
 moral assents," carried him, on his journey 
 in life, to a great distance from Epicurus : 
 to a very close proximity to Christ. How 
 instinctively, both before and after that crisis
 
 Golden I3oo&" 97 
 
 in the amphitheatre, he saw the nobler aspect 
 of every moral issue that presented itself to 
 him, either in the region of pure thought or 
 in that of a " concrete experience" not see- 
 ing it only, but electing to stand alongside of, 
 to become part of, the nobility he discerned ! 
 Later he seemed to decide everything with 
 reference to a deepening impression of a pos- 
 sible " final home to be attained at some still 
 remote date." How beautiful that "white 
 bird," his own soul was! And the relation 
 of how he kept it unsoiled amid the filth of 
 the world's market-places how beautiful 
 that was also ! Did I not think so ? 
 
 I remember saying that there were some 
 men who condemned the whole delineation 
 of the character of Marius as a piece of " spe- 
 cial pleading " on behalf of Epicureanism. 
 
 That was to fall into complete error, you 
 thought. Mr. Pater had presented the case 
 for Epicureanism as fairly and as fully as it 
 was possible to do, and as he was entitled to 
 do ; yet he criticised all the time with a keen 
 impressibility of the infinite distance, as of a 
 wide sea which no actual or imaginary bridge 
 might span, separating the highest dreams
 
 98 itp^ro$i?ne and 
 
 of the ancients from any " Christian vision 
 whatsoever." Surely one must have read 
 very superficially, or else with strong par- 
 tiality for preconceived prejudices, not to see 
 that. It seemed to you the recognition of 
 such an existing infinite distance lay behind 
 every beautiful chapter, and was the main 
 force at work in Mr. Pater's mind and heart, 
 influencing his development of the character 
 of Marius at every step. Why ! Marius vir- 
 tually abandoned his philosophy at the end. 
 This Mr. Pater would not have allowed, even 
 in an obscure manner, had he meant to exalt 
 Epicureanism above its legitimate place. 
 
 The first Sunday in September, we wor- 
 shipped together in a beautiful little church, 
 the pulpit of which during the summer season 
 was supplied by various prominent preachers 
 of the religious denomination it represented. 
 The preacher on this occasion was a man 
 about fifty years old : a spare man of medium 
 height, with graying hair, restless dark eyes, 
 and an immense vivacity of speech and action. 
 The sermon, I remember, was on Nicodemus, 
 and the preacher had much to say about the
 
 dSolDen TBoofe" 99 
 
 influence of culture on life and character. 
 Words and phrases like "humanism," "wor- 
 ship of the beautiful," " God-estranged de- 
 velopment," " selfish cultivation of the indi- 
 vidual faculties," were of frequent recurrence, 
 and always accompanied by an accent of 
 depreciation which seemed to be wholly 
 pleasing to the majority of the worshippers. 
 Though it was evident that his reading was 
 of a distinctly secondary order his mental 
 powers agreeing therewith he supplied 
 what was lacking in "fundamental brain- 
 work" by a copious and rapid flow of words. 
 It was easy to understand wherein his great 
 popularity lay. He never once, throughout 
 a discourse lasting forty minutes, lifted the 
 thought of that congregation above a very 
 ordinary level ; but there was about the man 
 himself a noticeable spirituality not, per- 
 haps, an actual restoration of the lost grace 
 of unction, but as near an approach to it as 
 a somewhat shallow nature could admit. And 
 this fervour redeemed from absolute con- 
 temptibility many of his morbid criticisms of a 
 life so far removed from him as to seem an- 
 tagonistic to his exposition of Christian prin-
 
 ciples. He nowhere admitted a possible 
 culture not external, but having its roots 
 hidden deep in the necessities of the soul. 
 The idea that men and women of certain 
 legitimate interests and tempers demanded 
 that the soul's life should have artistic ex- 
 pression given to it, that there should be 
 some correspondence between the outer 
 things and the inner vision, and that Chris- 
 tianity did actually take account of these men 
 and women, seemed never to have entered 
 within his intellectual horizon. Neither 
 was the thought conceivable to him of a re- 
 generation coming as the crowning revela- 
 tion, to the very verge of which a purely 
 moral or aesthetic culture might lead a sen- 
 sitive soul. Christianity and culture were 
 wholly inimical to each other; or, to employ 
 his own phrasing, " they were roads leading 
 in opposite directions, and he who had set 
 out for culture could not hope to reach the 
 cross except he turn back." The preacher 
 had forgotten that even so beautiful a soul 
 as St. John acknowledged the presence of a 
 various light that lighted every man coming 
 into the world. To him all human culture
 
 I3oofe " i o i 
 
 was darkness, having no place nor office 
 among the forces which made for spiritual 
 righteousness. And he missed altogether 
 the great significance of Jesus Christ's intel- 
 lectual treatment of Nicodemus' own spir- 
 itual difficulties. 
 
 Even to this day I cannot turn to the last 
 few chapters of the " Golden Book " without 
 seeing once again that thin, animated face, 
 and the small crowd of worshippers earnestly 
 devout, at least for an hour, amid the frivol- 
 ities of a seaside town just springing into 
 fashionable notice. For it was during the 
 conversation which arose some hours after- 
 wards, and for which the sermon was largely 
 responsible, that you found expression for 
 much of your thought regarding the attitude 
 of Marius and Walter Pater towards Chris- 
 tianity: we found it impossible to separate 
 them in our thought, the subjective interest 
 being so dominant that created and creator 
 were as one. 
 
 The days were shortening so rapidly that 
 the evening had seemed to close over the 
 lovely Sabbath much earlier than usual. 
 September was already promising an unquiet
 
 102 Curojne an& 
 
 autumn, and people who had arrived near 
 the end of the season expecting mild, warm 
 weather were surprised by the coldness of 
 the nights. Fires were blazing within doors 
 almost before the sun had dipped beyond 
 the distant marge of the sea ; and only hardy 
 persons, fearing no winds however chill, paced 
 the cliffs after six o'clock. But long before 
 that hour I was buried in a luxurious arm- 
 chair by your fireside, making great pre- 
 tense of reading, but furtively watching you 
 as you flitted here and there hurrying love's 
 elaborate preparation for the evening meal. 
 How startled I would appear when you 
 would steal behind my chair and kiss me 
 suddenly on the forehead, or drop some 
 early autumn crocuses on the open page of 
 the book ! With such simple joys the Lord 
 of the Sabbath fed our souls that evening. 
 Then, when the lamps were lit and the cur- 
 tains drawn close across the window, and 
 fresh turf and coals heaped upon the fire, 
 what sacred confidences, what exchange of 
 the deep things of the spirit, passed between 
 us two! But these things let any true 
 lover say if they can be written down.
 
 103 
 
 At last, however, we did revert to Marius 
 and the sermon we had heard in the morning. 
 I had remarked that I was afraid that our 
 preacher, and others who claimed spiritual 
 kinship with him, would object to the Chris- 
 tianity of Marius as being only one phase of 
 a various culture all tending to a perfecting 
 of self; and would say that at its highest it 
 was probably very little more than a subli- 
 mated Epicureanism. 
 
 Yes, such an objection might be made, 
 you thought, with a nearer approach to va- 
 lidity than the characterization of Marius I 
 had imagined. Perhaps there had been a 
 subtle appeal to the senses in his first contact 
 with the Christians, but it was, after all, " the 
 touching image of Jesus " that gave him that 
 inexplicable sense of peace and satisfaction 
 near the close of his life. It was true that 
 Christianity was one phase of his culture, 
 but it was the last and highest phase : being 
 the goal to which he had been, by many de- 
 vious paths, unconsciously journeying. To 
 expect Marius to be other than he was, to do 
 other than he did, was to show a strange lack 
 of historical perspective and spiritual insight.
 
 104 n\fyw&ynt ant) 
 
 His intellectual and spiritual attitude towards 
 the new religion was perfectly sincere, and 
 in sweet and strict accord with all his past. 
 Christianity came to Marius last, and after 
 years of lonely adventuring in philosophic 
 wildernesses, and it was in no wise repugnant 
 to him ; nay, rather it was welcome : and 
 this revealed how far he had journeyed apart 
 from the true Epicurean to whom Chris- 
 tianity was a hateful thing. On first real 
 acquaintance Marius surmised that this new 
 and beautiful religion was more than a mere 
 philosophy, and that it might make " a de- 
 mand for something from him in return," 
 that it might even change the whole current 
 of his life so that " he could never again be 
 altogether as he had been before." Yet he 
 welcomed it, growing gradually into a clearer 
 apprehension of the Source from which it all 
 sprang. It seemed inconceivable to you, 
 how otherwise Christianity could have come 
 to him. There were surely more paths than 
 the one the morning preacher spoke of by 
 which a soul might attain to precise know- 
 ledge of its own place and function in the 
 "general scheme" of the universe; might
 
 " 
 
 dSotten I3oofe" 105 
 
 reach to use the preacher's language again 
 the Cross. One man might hope to gain the 
 beatific vision by self-flagellations, in per- 
 verse solitude, or in a magnificent martyr- 
 dom. But to a personality like Marius, 
 though not wanting, as events proved, in 
 those elements which render man capable of 
 the most splendid sacrifices, such things as 
 " means to an end " were worthless. Chris- 
 tianity could only come to him in the sense 
 of a perfect spiritual addition his spiritual 
 instincts being always dominant to what 
 had already established itself in his refined 
 and sensitive soul. Had Mr. Pater chosen 
 any other manner of its presentation it was 
 difficult to see how he could have avoided 
 doing violence to all sense of moral and 
 artistic proportion. How beautiful the re- 
 ligious seriousness of Marius was ! From 
 those earlier times, when the religion of 
 Numa challenged him to ponderings on the 
 Divine nature, until long after the death of 
 Flavian, when he felt once again " the sense 
 of a friendly hand laid upon him amid the 
 shadows of the world," he seemed to have 
 "had frequent intimations of a possible benign
 
 06 cEuljrojsne and 
 
 presence moving always behind the " flaming 
 barriers " : "a heart even as mine behind the 
 vain show of things." How tenderly and 
 reverently, and with what wonderful insight, 
 Mr. Pater wrote of early Christianity ! In- 
 deed, the significance of " Part Four " lay, 
 you thought, in the soft warmth and almost 
 fresh colour, at least the new radiance given 
 to it. Or was it not rather a literary return 
 to the expression of the wonderful radiance 
 as seen in the Gospel of Saint John and in 
 the joyousness of the earliest Christian art? 
 
 There was one more thing you said which 
 I will set down here and so close this chap- 
 ter. I had been quoting Matthew Arnold, 
 or making some reference to him, when you 
 said that you thought Walter Pater saw more 
 deeply, and with a far more luminous eye, 
 into the heart of both culture and Chris- 
 tianity than Matthew Arnold had done, de- 
 fining their relations with closer accuracy. 
 Mr. Arnold's definition of culture as "An 
 inward and spiritual activity having for its 
 characters increased sweetness, increased light, 
 increased life, increased sympathy," was very 
 beautiful ; but he was surely wanting in that
 
 f tt" <0olDen Boofc" 107 
 
 insight into the nature of Christianity which 
 would have shown him that it took into 
 itself all those characters he imagined to be 
 the peculiar property of culture, and trans- 
 figured them in a passionate devotion to a 
 Person who had made such things possible. 
 Mr. Pater saw that although culture might 
 lead a man to the very door of the Christian 
 sanctuary it could by no means "go beyond 
 it." To Matthew Arnold, Christianity was 
 one of the many means towards attaining a 
 larger culture, to Walter Pater it was the 
 golden crown set high above culture. It was 
 that which gave the distinction and the dif- 
 ference to the two High Priests of culture.
 
 Behind the 
 "Flaming Barriers."
 
 Behind the 
 Flaming Barriers. 
 
 jj 
 
 *t Seven 
 
 UT for thefprom- 
 ise made to you 
 during the days 
 of which I have 
 now to write, I 
 would proceed 
 no further with 
 this story. No, 
 nor would I have 
 ever set out to 
 tell it, so endangering is it to the sweet se- 
 renity of these later years. As it is, for 
 nearly eight years I have been girding myself 
 with strength that I may write this single 
 chapter to which all the rest is but a pro- 
 longed prelude. One day more of supreme 
 felicity remained to us, and then the be- 
 ginning of the end!
 
 and 
 
 Thus far I have made no mention (How 
 could I, my Euphrosyne?) of "our" island 
 which lay about a half-hour's rowing distance 
 from the shore; yet that island was one of 
 our favourite places of retirement. If it had 
 a geographical name, we never heard it. To 
 us it was known always as the Painter's 
 Palette because of its shape, which was like 
 an immense oval palette floating on the sea; 
 the long curve being the farther shore. On 
 the right of the island as we approached it 
 was an indentation, hardly to be called a bay, 
 and behind that, in about the same position 
 as the thumb-hole in a palette, rose a slight 
 mound thickly covered with sweet-smelling 
 wild-thyme and the bluest of delicate hare- 
 bells. The rest of the island was a level 
 plain with nothing to obstruct the sight save 
 a few patches of yellowing corn, a field or 
 two of potatoes, one of beans with black ugly 
 stalks, and several meadows clothed in the 
 richest green of aftermath. In certain lights 
 it looked as though an artist had set his 
 palette for some stupendous work of the 
 imagination: and by and by, as you said one 
 day, if only we waited long enough and had
 
 d^oltien I3oo6" 113 
 
 faith, we might see him come and pick up 
 the great palette and start to work. On 
 stormy nights we would watch the sea, from 
 your cottage window, beating riotously 
 around the island, and listen for the mighty 
 tread of the distant artist whose nearing foot- 
 steps made the waves leap, half seriously ex- 
 pecting to catch sight of this mythical creature 
 of our fancy and see the palette disappear 
 suddenly in his capacious grasp; but every 
 morning, when the sun came up, the Painter's 
 Palette still lay floating on the face of the 
 waters awaiting the delaying artist. 
 
 Do you remember still, Euphrosyne, in 
 that place whither you have fled, how we 
 would lie a whole day upon the short, 
 springy grass at the base of the mound, and 
 bathe our hands in the thyme? and how, 
 while I would relate some wonderful peasant 
 tale of the "little people" inhabiting the 
 flowers, you would pluck those flowers and 
 arrange them in fancy groups for sketching? 
 Do you remember all this as I do every 
 morning and every night? How rapidly you 
 worked, and with what perfect grace! The 
 margins of my second volume of "Marius."
 
 are decorated with those delicate colour-stud- 
 ies, which look as fresh and fadeless as they 
 did on the day you placed them there. "This 
 must be your harebell volume," you said 
 merrily the very Monday on which we vis- 
 ited the Painter's Palette for the last time. 
 
 What a Monday it was ! Following close 
 upon that beautiful Sabbath, it seemed to be 
 an extension of it. We were away early, with 
 all kinds of delicacies packed in our little 
 boat, for we intended to stay as long as the 
 sun warmed the grass under our feet. To- 
 night it seems to me, looking back through 
 the mists of all the intervening years, that 
 you were never lovelier than on that morning. 
 No lark throbbing up the sky was ever half 
 so joyous as you were wandering hand-in- 
 hand with me about that enchanted island. 
 Nothing would satisfy you but that you must 
 leave some of your joy in the three lonely 
 cottages on the far shore a full mile dis- 
 tant from our landing-place. So, after rob- 
 bing the boat of a portion of its delicacies, 
 we set off, that you, with your wonderful 
 smile and shining face, might make glad the 
 hearts of five little children. And when we
 
 115 
 
 returned how tired you were! not alone be- 
 cause of the walk, but because something of 
 your spirit had been left among those sim- 
 ple cottagers. 
 
 When I had brought cushions from the 
 boat and placed them under your head as 
 you lay on the side of the mound, I heaped 
 armsful of wild-thyme and harebells over 
 you, and we laughed and kissed beneath the 
 golden sun as though untold years of love 
 and fellowship stretched invitingly before us. 
 Then I told you a story editing it but a 
 little that I had heard from one of the 
 children in the cottages. How that years 
 and years ago, before her father's father was 
 born, the great clusters of harebells which 
 now crowned the mound did not grow there 
 at all, but down on the plain near the other 
 shore. And how her father's father no, it 
 was her father's father's father, used to see 
 the " little people " every night when the 
 moon was up visiting each other and playing 
 funny little games together. Sometimes he 
 would hear music and singing, but he never 
 could see the harps and things they made 
 their music on. But one morning when he
 
 woke and looked out of the window there 
 were no harebells to be seen; nothing but soft, 
 dirty earth where the night before the blue 
 carpet had been. He could not imagine 
 where they had gone, until looking across the 
 island he saw that a mound had been built 
 in the night-time and it v/as covered with the 
 flowers, who were all fast asleep. The faeries 
 had carried them away in the darkness and 
 raised the little mound that they might watch 
 the moon dancing on the waters, without 
 leaving their flowery houses. "Wasn't it 
 good of them to build the hill where it did 
 not hurt anybody's land?" the little child 
 had said. " Father says we ought not to 
 tread on the flowers, because if we did some- 
 one would be homeless." 
 
 So I repeated this story to you on the very 
 hill the " little people " had set up, and some- 
 how ending upon the word "homeless" it 
 seemed to make us both sad at heart, and for 
 some time we gazed silently out across the 
 sea. For several minutes it seemed to us 
 that the whole world had become suddenly 
 houseless and homeless. But I doubt if any- 
 thing except the presence of an actual per-
 
 Golden I3ooir 117 
 
 sonal sorrow could have permanently shattered 
 our high spirits that day, and we were soon 
 as merry as ever. 
 
 Precisely in what manner we rilled the 
 early hours of that afternoon I cannot now 
 recollect, because of the things that came 
 afterwards ; but I do remember pleading with 
 you, in spite of your prohibition of the sub- 
 ject, to allow our marriage to take place : 
 urging your already so greatly improved 
 health, and offering to take you away any- 
 where. And how well I remember your 
 sweet vacillation, your half-promise to decide 
 on the morrow ! The morrow ah! my love, 
 it was God who decided then ! You kissed 
 me, on the lips and on the eyes, "to banish 
 the sadness which is stealing into them," you 
 said. 
 
 It was just at that moment that the first 
 drops of rain fell. Quite suddenly, without 
 the least forewarning, immense black clouds 
 had massed in the sky, and a close blinding 
 rain came on swift feet as though driven 
 across the sea by some unseen, malignant 
 Fury. There was absolutely no shelter, the 
 cottages being on the other side of the island,
 
 and in less than fifteen minutes we were 
 drenched, for our light clothing offered us no 
 protection against such a storm. I do not 
 believe that it lasted longer than twenty 
 minutes, and it ceased as abruptly as it had 
 started. By the time we were half-way to 
 the mainland the sun was shining as brightly 
 and the sea heaving as steadily as if the tor- 
 rents of rain had been but a projection of our 
 fancy. If one believes in an informing spirit 
 at work in natural things, one can hardly 
 escape the conviction, absurd though it may 
 be, of a sense of fantastic mockery and utter 
 heartlessness in such sudden mutations. And 
 glad as we were to have the sunshine, we felt, 
 rather than saw, the lurking sarcasm behind 
 the smiling sky. But we were not greatly 
 perturbed, nor had we any fear of possible 
 untoward results following the drenching. 
 You went directly home, taking every pre- 
 caution against chills. 
 
 In about an hour I rejoined you at the 
 cottage; and that evening was one of the 
 most beautiful I have ever known. You 
 told me all things concerning yourself; of 
 your many travels with your father; of his
 
 dftol&en I3oofe " 119 
 
 death ; of your two years' loneliness ; and of 
 the great joy that couched in your heart now. 
 How subdued it all was : the mingling of our 
 tears being a renewed consecration of fellow- 
 ship! You said that you had wanted room 
 in which to live and that I had given it to 
 you; that there was nothing noble, nor true, 
 nor grand in me that was not yours also, as 
 the sunshine, and the flowers, and the moun- 
 tains were yours : investing me with attri- 
 butes of which God forgive me I knew 
 nothing. What divine gods loving women 
 make of us lovers of clay ! And many other 
 precious things you said which my heart alone 
 may know, and know only for its humbling. 
 I left you earlier than usual because you 
 looked tired. And as we stood breast to 
 breast for the kiss of benediction, as you 
 called it, God kindly gave no sign that we 
 should stand there no more forever. 
 
 The deepest tragedies of life do not come 
 to us with any dramatic accessories, but alone 
 and in simple state, with no fine flourish of 
 trumpets ; with none of those theatrical 
 effects out of which the mind might extract
 
 1 20 Cup^ro^ne and 
 
 some little alleviation. They creep upon us 
 gently, noiselessly, almost unawares, and are 
 not recognized as tragedies until afterwards, 
 when they have gained a sure entrance into 
 our life, there to stay through all the unre- 
 lieving years. Or, what is perhaps more 
 awful still, they are felt as dimly possible 
 long before the actual note has struck ; and 
 on looking backwards we can scarcely say, 
 "At this moment, or at that, the tragedy of 
 my life began "; for it seems that the tragic 
 note had ever been trembling in the air 
 around us, being at times distinctly audible 
 prior to any precise moment of which we are 
 able to give fair account; even the joy pre- 
 ponderating so largely until, it may be, the 
 very day of our forced recognition of the 
 inevitable, seeming now to have been not the 
 least powerful element in the long tragedy. 
 
 I do not say, then, that the tragic note 
 entered my life on that particular Tuesday 
 morning for it was most surely there from 
 the first moment of our soul's union, though 
 the sound of it was muffled, almost lost amid 
 the richer music of those hallowed weeks 
 but only that when I went as usual in search
 
 121 
 
 of you, and the little golden-haired maid met 
 me at the door with a sorrowful counte- 
 nance, saying you were very unwell and that 
 I was to go upstairs at once, I distinctly 
 heard within me a low moan as of far-distant 
 thunder, and I knew that your hour and 
 mine was nigh at hand. 
 
 It is one of the most fortunate of cir- 
 cumstances, but one for which we are seldom 
 grateful, that the senses often fall into a state 
 of utter apathy under the first great shock 
 of calamity. Were it not for this merciful 
 suspension of sensation we might become 
 wholly incapacitated for ministering to the 
 needs of others our sorrow degenerating 
 into a pitiful egotism. Yet how readily we 
 blame ourselves afterwards for that lack of 
 feeling which made us for the time being 
 able and discreet helpers. I am sure this 
 must be a most commonplace occurrence, yet 
 the mention of it in this place seems, at least 
 to me, to be necessitated; for I do not re- 
 member that I ever entered a sick-room 
 more composedly in all my professional 
 career, although the tranquillity lasted but a 
 little while.
 
 122 (taro$ne and 
 
 We greeted each other with calm tender- 
 ness, though I fancied you grew watchfully 
 apprehensive lest you should betray the fear 
 that lay in your heart. And as I caught the 
 first and only expression of weariness in your 
 face that I ever saw there, I knew the worst. 
 Yet the overwhelming pity that surged in 
 my heart was not for myself, but appeared 
 to spring from mixed impressions of an aged 
 and saddened world being robbed of that 
 which it could so ill spare, and a certain pagan 
 regret that so fair a creature must shortly be 
 laid out of sight forever. I do not account or 
 apologize for this, I simply state it frankly. 
 As human beings we are far less responsible 
 for the first emotions that master us than we 
 are apt to give ourselves credit. And the 
 impersonality of my pity struck me curiously 
 even amid the varying emotions of the mo- 
 ment. It was as though I, the one man, 
 stood as the representative of my kindred, 
 and the pity then awakened in me as I gazed 
 at your sad, beautiful face was a sublime 
 pity embracing universal man. Then the 
 realization of the personal sorrow took full 
 possession of my being ; everything else faded
 
 I3oofe" 123 
 
 away and only you and I were left. I heard 
 you saying, as if you had been speaking for 
 some time: 
 
 " But you must tell me plainly what you 
 think." 
 
 " Ah ! but can you bear it, my Euphros- 
 yne?" I said. 
 
 With the mention of that dear name, used 
 now for the first time in sadness, your face 
 lighted up once more till it seemed as if a 
 gleam of glory quivered about your bed. 
 
 " Yes, I must be c Euphrosyne ' still, my 
 beloved ! . . . . The Lady of Joy! " you 
 murmured. 
 
 Then remembering what I had asked, 
 there came into your face a look of profound 
 pity and inquiry; and you stretched out 
 your hands, resting them on my arm. 
 
 " It is I, not you, who ought to ask that. 
 O my soul's husband, can you bear it?" 
 
 Your questioning, pitying eyes almost un- 
 manned me, but I stooped and kissed you, 
 giving some kind of assurance, and then com- 
 menced a thorough examination, prolonging 
 it purposely in order that I might gain more 
 perfect command of myself. When it was
 
 1 24 Cup^ro^ne anD 
 
 over my worst fears were confirmed, and I 
 went downstairs to send off the little maid 
 with a telegram for my favourite nurse. 
 When I returned you did not speak, but 
 looked steadily and lovingly into my eyes ; 
 and as I drew a chair close to the bedside, 
 you placed your hand in mine, lying perfectly 
 still for a long time. I did not dare to look 
 at you, but gazed stonily out of the window 
 at the sea, which seemed, to my excited fancy, 
 to be calling, calling to us to come out and 
 play. By and by you said : 
 
 " My husband ! " It was always " hus- 
 band " after this, even to the nurse when she 
 arrived. " My husband, how long may I 
 have to stay with you? " 
 
 " Three or four days at the longest," I 
 said. 
 
 " So long as that ! . . . God is good ! . . . 
 and ... we have still our love. Think ! four 
 days more of it ... and then . . . the bosom 
 of ... God ! " 
 
 After another prolonged silence we com- 
 menced to speak of immediate things, and I 
 told you that already a special nurse had 
 been sent for, and that she might be with us
 
 Golden OBoofe" 125 
 
 by nightfall ; that I must have the local 
 doctor called in the afternoon for consulta- 
 tion. You demurred a little at this, but when 
 I explained the professional necessity of it, 
 and assured you that it would be quite formal, 
 you consented. And the great tragedy in the 
 .background grew clearer and more ghastly 
 as the inevitable business which it had sud- 
 denly forced into dreadful prominence was 
 transacted by us two that morning. 
 
 It is impossible to write much about those 
 intervening days, for from Tuesday until the 
 Sunday seems one long night to me now, 
 with here and there flashes of wonderful 
 daylight. The nurse arrived that evening, 
 and I told her as much of our story as I 
 considered necessary. My confidence in her 
 was amply repaid, and in all my memories 
 of those awful days she has a grateful and 
 enduring place. But in spite of our care and 
 thought the darkness settled gradually over 
 your cottage. Each day you drew further 
 away from the world, and each day seemed 
 to add something ineffable to the wondrous 
 beauty of your face,
 
 During the early evening of one of those 
 last days, I gave you the promise of which 
 this book is the attempted fulfillment. All 
 that day I had been in a state known to 
 others who have lived through a period of pro- 
 tracted suffering, a state of almost complete 
 forgetfulness; or perhaps " aloofness " would 
 be the closer term. It seemed as if your 
 dying was to affect not me, but some other 
 person whom I did not exactly know; and 
 that I was a spectator again as on so many 
 other occasions of another's sorrow. There 
 was a vague, restless desire to know who it 
 was that would be sorry when you were gone, 
 so that I might offer what comfort I could, 
 and so ease the strange pain at my own heart. 
 I saw a lady strolling languidly down by the 
 beach, and I wondered had she stayed just 
 to see the end dear, sad woman ! I stopped 
 a gentleman as he was passing me on the hotel 
 stairs to ask him if he would be very sorrow- 
 stricken when Euphrosyne died. He stared 
 hard at me for a few moments, not compre- 
 hending, and believing me to be demented ; 
 for of course he had never heard of you by 
 that name. Then, as the thought struck
 
 Golden I3oofe" 127 
 
 him, he said compassionately may God 
 reward him ! 
 
 " Ah ! the young lady at the cottage ! Is 
 she so ill ? . . . Yes, I shall be sorry. . . . 
 Poor fellow ! " 
 
 So it continued throughout most of the 
 day ; even in one of my early visits to you 
 I sorely puzzled the nurse by saying that I 
 was going to meet the train because some one 
 might come who loved you, and I wanted to 
 tell them myself how matters were. But as 
 I opened the little white gate in the evening, 
 the whole situation flashed back upon me, 
 and 1 knew it was I who needed comforting, 
 and there was none to comfort me. A shrill 
 bird or two busied themselves in the garden, 
 making faint trials of fresh love-songs for 
 the autumn ; and their very unconsciousness 
 of the presence of so great a sorrow as mine 
 seemed needlessly cruel. Nature now was 
 no longer accordant. For some inscrutable 
 reason I must be hateful to her. I wondered 
 indifferently what I could have done that 
 nature should set her birds to mock me ; but 
 I was too dejected to seek long for an answer. 
 
 This sudden return to the consciousness
 
 1 28 Cup^ro^ne an& 
 
 of my own place among the things of sorrow 
 unfitted me for your presence ; and for the 
 first and only time I was wholly demoralized. 
 I knelt at your bedside, regardless of every- 
 thing, and with your delicate hand in mine, 
 sobbed out all my grief. What could I do 
 when you were gone? . . . Why had we 
 ever met ? . . . What was the use of love 
 like ours, to end so soon ? . . . Better far 
 not to have loved ! . . . Better to have 
 gone through life with my first loneliness 
 than to have this awful, second loneliness 
 surrounding me forever ! . . . No ! God 
 could not be good as men said. ... It 
 was all an illusion. 
 
 And you answered me : " Nay, my dear, 
 dear husband ! What you are saying is not 
 the truth. The truth lies elsewhere. Sit 
 here upon my bed and raise me a little, and 
 I will talk with you." 
 
 So I lifted you up and sat beside you, 
 leaning back so that I could support you. 
 And your tired head rested on my shoulder 
 as you spake with me, pausing now and again 
 to rest or to find the word you wanted. 
 
 " I do not understand many things, dear,
 
 " 
 
 Golden I3oofe " 129 
 
 for God keeps His own counsel until the 
 * fulness of time.' Pain and sorrow have 
 ever been most awful mysteries to me, and 
 no solution the world has yet heard is alto- 
 gether satisfactory. I do not think that any 
 perfect solution will ever be written down ; 
 for the heart knows so much more than it 
 can express. Once (when father died, it 
 was) I rebelled as you are rebelling now, 
 and for many weeks my heart was hardened 
 against God. I could not think of Him as 
 the Living Father, sorrowing for His child's 
 sorrow; rather He seemed an ineluctable 
 Power set in wilful antagonism to me, caring 
 nothing for my loneliness. By and by I 
 found others who also suffered, and in min- 
 istering to them my own hurt was healed, 
 how I cannot explain. And now, although 
 there have been all these months of separa- 
 tion, I am glad of those beautiful talks and 
 journeyings we had once together. And O 
 my husband, you have filled these last days 
 of my earthly life with a radiance and a joy 
 that I never looked for nor imagined ! " 
 Here came a long pause, in which we gazed 
 out of the window at the white sails of a boat
 
 i3 Cup^ro^ne anu 
 
 that seemed to be drifting helplessly far out 
 at sea. We watched it until, as the sun 
 moved away from it, the sails lost their ex- 
 ceeding whiteness, sinking to a dull grey that 
 troubled the senses. You turned away from 
 the darkening picture, and looked straight 
 into my eyes. " Some day," you said, " it 
 may be soon, or it may be after long years, 
 you also will be wholly glad for what has 
 been. I have said this to you before, I 
 know, but I am always thinking it. You 
 will no longer say that it is a mere poetic 
 sentimentalism, but will recognise as the 
 soul's expression of its deepest truth, that 
 
 " l 'Tis better to have loved and lost 
 Than never to have loved at all.' 
 
 "Pain and sorrow and separation are real 
 things, but so also, my husband, are love and 
 faith ; and these remain. When the pain has 
 been numbed, and the sorrow assuaged by 
 time, and separation seems not the despairing 
 thing it is to-day, then love will be more 
 beautiful than ever, more cherished than 
 ever. I wish I could say this better, dear ! 
 But sometime you will know what I mean."
 
 131 
 
 You were silent, and I played absently with 
 your lovely hair, and kissed your forehead 
 and your fingers. In a little while you spake 
 again, making me promise that, when the day 
 came in which I could believe and under- 
 stand what you had said, I would tell men 
 everywhere that God was good both in His 
 giving and in His taking away ; that pessi- 
 mism was an abnormal result of eccentric 
 speculation; that there was no waste in love 
 nor in life both would justify themselves in 
 all circumstances if only we would be passive 
 and teachable. 
 
 So the days came unwelcomed, and passed 
 uncounted ; for as you became weaker, night 
 and day were as one to us who watched and 
 waited. We walked about the cottage very 
 softly, and spake to each other in sad whis- 
 pers, smiling only when in your room. In- 
 deed, the one bright spot in that whole house 
 was where you were. In every other room 
 desolation and gloom sat enthroned. I can- 
 not say that either the little golden-haired 
 maid or I was brave, neither do I wish to 
 say so. The vile indifference of the Stoic
 
 anD 
 
 must be an abomination to the hearts of those 
 who have ever truly loved. The light and 
 glory of my life was departing ere yet I had 
 seen its fulness; and who was I that my 
 heart should not be bowed down within me, 
 that my eyes should not run rivers of tears ? 
 It was the tragedy of every bereaved house- 
 hold being enacted anew, and its daily de- 
 tails are known, alas! to millions of broken 
 hearts. And brave and smiling as we were 
 in your presence, in our hearts sorrow sat 
 triumphant and made cowards of us all when 
 away from you. 
 
 But the Sabbath morning came at last. 
 You had lived longer than I had dared hope, 
 and during the Saturday night had slept 
 wonderfully well, and your sleep prolonged 
 itself until the church-bells rang out for wor- 
 ship. It was the sound of the bells that told 
 me it was the Sabbath day. When you 
 awoke I was standing with my back to you 
 looking out of the window, and the sound of 
 your voice startled me. 
 
 "My husband! is this Sunday?" you 
 asked; and then said, "I shall be with 
 my father to-night. Don't you think it
 
 133 
 
 is beautiful to go away on the Sabbath 
 day?" 
 
 From that moment you began to sink 
 rapidly, speaking but little, and then as to 
 yourself. Occasionally your thoughts wan- 
 dered backwards through the years, and we 
 caught the word "Wharfedale," and knew 
 you were with your father. Then again 
 came incoherent sentences, so pitiful for us 
 to hear, in which my name had chief place. 
 Once you brightened marvellously for a few 
 minutes. It was when the little children 
 from the Painter's Palette brought you some 
 fresh blackberries the first fruits of that 
 season. When I told you about them, you 
 opened your eyes and smiled ah! my Eu- 
 phrosyne, how sadly ! a mere shadow of the 
 old joyous smile. 
 
 " I must eat . . . one . . . just one, 
 . . . for it is ... their love - offering," 
 you whispered. 
 
 Then when I gave you one, you said: 
 
 " Tell them it was . . . good . . . and 
 ... I shall not . . . forget." 
 
 You spoke no more until the evening, 
 but lay perfectly quiet, now and then mov-
 
 34 
 
 ing your hand along the coverlet that I should 
 take it into mine. In the afternoon you slept 
 for nearly two hours; but just as the setting 
 sun cast a bar of golden light above your 
 head, you opened your eyes, and I heard 
 you whisper. 
 
 "My husband . . . kiss me; ... I 
 . . . am going ... to ... to my 
 father. . . . We will wait . . . there . . . 
 for you, . . . and then the . . . house 
 . . . will be ... will be full. . . . 
 Good-night . . . my . . . beloved." 
 
 The last few words were scarcely distin- 
 guishable; and as I pressed a long kiss upon 
 your pale brow you parted from me, 
 
 "landing on some quiet shore, 
 Where, billows never break nor tempests roar." 
 
 When again I dared look upon your face, 
 the old smile and radiance had come back into 
 it, and it was upon the dead face of a shining 
 angel that I gazed.
 
 Epilogue
 
 '37 
 
 Epilogue 
 
 O Euphrosyne 
 passed behind 
 the "flaming 
 barriers," and I 
 was left alone. 
 In the days im- 
 mediately fol- 
 lowing a certain 
 curious torpor 
 settled upon 
 my heart and brain which I mistook for the 
 peace of which she had spoken. But after 
 all the last, sad duties were fulfilled, and 
 Euphrosyne quietly buried on the crest of the 
 mound in the Painter's Palette, and I had 
 returned to the city intending to take up 
 my old life once more, I found how im- 
 possible was the attempt. Only a few weeks 
 had come and gone since I had left; but 
 between then and now yawned a vast chasm 
 which no endeavour of mine could bridge. 
 My old life had vanished as completely
 
 138 (Eup^rostyne and 
 
 as though it had not been, and the new 
 was so disorganised and troubled that any 
 attempt to place it in the old setting was 
 certain to end disastrously. So within two 
 months of the death of Euphrosyne I had 
 sold my practice to my assistant and had 
 become a wanderer on the face of the 
 earth. 
 
 To detail my sorrow in the ears of a de- 
 sentimentalised age would only be to court 
 mockery and incredulity, for it is so rare 
 a thing to-day to find any retention of be- 
 lief in the constancy of human affection. 
 I must fain content myself with the bare 
 assertion that wherever I went alike in 
 the deserts and forests of Africa, the steppes 
 of Russia, or the crowded cities of the con- 
 tinent the shining eyes of my dead Euphros- 
 yne gazed out upon me mournfully; and 
 neither the grandeur of this scene, nor the 
 delicate various beauty of that, brought any 
 permanent consolation to my lonely spirit. 
 Perhaps for two days together a wonderful 
 peace would surround me, only to be shat- 
 tered on the third day by a renewed and 
 appalling sense of desolateness.
 
 " 
 
 d&olDen 13006 " 139 
 
 In the winter of the year 1890 I was in 
 Paris, that gayest of all gay cities ; and if any 
 kindly reader cares to understand the con- 
 dition of my heart at that time, he may be 
 able to do so by reading the following son- 
 net which was written there. I called it 
 "A Dream Sonnet," and I insert it here 
 not that you should criticise, but only that 
 you may know something, if you choose, 
 of the sad human soul that composed it, 
 and know also that the peace of my present 
 life came not without struggle: 
 
 I dreamt last night of dead Euphrosyne: 
 That we in great amazement stood beside 
 The unforgotten, fragrant sea. A bride 
 
 Was she, and I her mate. A living ray 
 
 Of gold and amethyst about her lay, 
 But cast no Shadow anywhere. I cried 
 Exultant: "See, dark Fear is gone has died!" 
 
 And knelt upon the wave-ribbed sand to pray. 
 
 But lo! these over-tense and silent years, 
 So over-freighted with tempestuous grief, 
 
 Remain. Swift love upon my furrowed brow 
 
 Hath set no crown. The aching morn appears, 
 And I, from night and night's illusions brief, 
 
 Awake to day, to life's exhausted Now!
 
 i4 Cup^ro^ne and 
 
 My wandering life and the continued brood- 
 ing over the past had told so severely upon 
 my health that when I reached London in 
 August of the following year it was only 
 to fall a victim to brain fever which had 
 threatened me on several occasions. For 
 weeks I lay hovering between life and death, 
 longing with vehement passion in conscious 
 moments for death which delayed irreso- 
 lutely. But in the end life conquered, and 
 it was during the long convalescence which 
 followed that the peace of which Euphros- 
 yne had spoken became possible to me. 
 Like her I grew conscious of other sorrows, 
 even greater and more poignant than mine, 
 and I remembered her beautiful words; 
 so as strength returned I set myself right 
 heartily to the work of ministering, and Love 
 justified herself as Euphrosyne had said. 
 
 Let a man become truly aware of the silent 
 " great stream of human tears falling always 
 through the shadows of the world"; let him 
 see not only the beauty of life but its sor- 
 rows the more sorrowful because so inex- 
 pressive then one of two things happens: 
 the delicately aspiring sympathy slumbering
 
 ( Soften I3oo&" 141 
 
 beneath the human bosom bursts forth into 
 flowers and fruit, wholesomely fragrant and 
 sweet; or the piteous weight of his own 
 and the world's woe crushes the frail rootlet 
 which hereafter can bring naught to surface 
 but the thorn. A vivid realization of the 
 sorrowful accentuations of life makes a man 
 either saviour or cynic: temperamental pecu- 
 liarities contributing largely to either result. 
 If he be docile and receptive, taught Euphros- 
 yne, such realization will be effective in the 
 creation of those beautiful things which make 
 for perfect life : and after long struggle I also 
 at last entered into the truth. 
 
 So at the end of the fifth year the baptism 
 of sorrow that had descended on me had 
 finished its work. I saw that Euphrosyne 
 had been allowed to cross my life-line and 
 halt for ever so brief a moment to minister 
 to me, and I am richer to-day because I have 
 known her and loved her : considering my- 
 self, because of her, to be still in God's 
 debt. For Euphrosyne is more real to me 
 to-day than in the fair days of her flesh, 
 and the shining of her eyes and the shining 
 of her face make my morning every day.
 
 PRINTED BY R. R. DONNELLEY 
 AND SONS COMPANY, AT THE 
 LAKESIDE PRESS, CHICAGO, ILL.