wine of undying devotion, and drink to the
memory of the Women of the Revolution,--to the humble but good and
marvelously brave and faithful women like those of old Vincennes.

But if Alice was being radically influenced by Beverley, he in turn
found a new light suffusing his nature, and he was not unaware that it
came out of her eyes, her face, her smiles, her voice, her soul. It was
the old, well-known, inexplicable, mutual magnetism, which from the
first has been the same on the highest mountain-top and in the lowest
valley. The queen and the milkmaid, the king and the hind may come
together only to find the king walking off with the lowly beauty and
her fragrant pail, while away stalks the lusty rustic, to be lord and
master of the queen. Love is love, and it thrives in all climes, under
all conditions.

There is an inevitable and curious protest that comes up unbidden
between lovers; it takes many forms in accordance with particular
circumstances. It is the demand for equality and perfection. Love
itself is without degrees--it is perfect--but when shall it see the
perfect object? It does see it, and it does not see it, in every
beloved being. Beverley found his mind turning, as on a pivot, round
and round upon the thought that Alice might be impossible to him. The
mystery of her life seemed to force her below the line of his
aristocratic vision, so that he could not fairly consider her, and yet
with all his heart he loved her. Alice, on the other hand, had her
bookish ideal to reckon with, despite the fact that she daily dashed it
contemptuously down. She was different from Adrienne Bourcier, who
bewailed the absence of her un-tamable lover; she wished that Beverley
had not, as she somehow viewed it, weakly surrendered to Hamilton. His
apparently complacent acceptance of idle captivity did not comport with
her dream of knighthood and heroism. She had been all the time half
expecting him to do something that would stamp him a hero.

Counter protests of this sort are never sufficiently vigorous to take a
fall out of Love; they merely serve to worry his temper by lightly
hindering his feet. And it is surprising how Love does delight himself
with being entangled.

Both Beverley and Alice day by day felt the cord tightening which drew
their hearts together--each acknowledged it secretly, but strove not to
evince it openly. Meantime both were as happy and as restlessly
dissatisfied as love and uncertainty could make