y of character, not the exhibition of
attributes which though they might qualify you for the rank of heroine
in a Greek drama, are nowadays only likely to qualify you for the
reprobation of society.

What? you would rather keep your love, your reprehensible love which
never can be satisfied, and bear its slings and arrows, and die hugging
a shadow to your heart, straining your eyes into the darkness of that
beyond whither you shall go--murmuring with your pale lips that _there_
you will find reason and fulfilment? Why it is folly. What ground have
you to suppose that you will find anything of the sort? Go and take the
opinion of some scientific person of eminence upon this infatuation of
yours and those vague visions of glory that shall be. He will explain
it clearly enough, will show you that your love itself is nothing but
a natural passion, acting, in your case, on a singularly sensitive and
etherealised organism. Be frank with him, tell him of your secret hopes.
He will smile tenderly, and show you how those also are an emanation
from a craving heart, and the innate superstitions of mankind. Indeed
he will laugh and illustrate the absurdity of the whole thing by a few
pungent examples of what would happen if these earthly affections could
be carried beyond the grave. Take what you can _now_ will be the burden
of his song, and for goodness' sake do not waste your precious hours in
dreams of a To Be.

Beatrice, the world does not want your spirituality. It is not a
spiritual world; it has no clear ideas upon the subject--it pays its
religious premium and works off its aspirations at its weekly church
going, and would think the person a fool who attempted to carry theories
of celestial union into an earthly rule of life. It can sympathise with
Lady Honoria; it can hardly sympathise with _you_.

And yet you will still choose this better part: you will still "live and
love, and lose."

"With blinding tears and passionate beseeching, And outstretched arms
through empty silence reaching."

Then, Beatrice, have your will, sow your seed of tears, and take your
chance. You may find that you were right and the worldlings wrong, and
you may reap a harvest beyond the grasp of their poor imaginations. And
if you find that they are right and _you_ are wrong, what will it matter
to you who sleep? For of this at least you are sure. If there is no
future for such earthly love as yours, then indeed there is none for the
children