f the desert, turns and
smiles upon the world he conquered.

"The great night collects and advances in shadow; and wandering
vapour, taking fire in the darkness, rolls, tumbling over and over
like fiery serpents, through loneliness and reeds.

"But in the eternal sunshine of the South flowers have not become
extinct; winds have carried seeds hither and thither, and the earth
has waxed lovely, and the calm of the spiritual evenings of the
Adriatic descend upon eternal perfume and the songs of birds. Symbol
of pain or joy there is none, and the august silence is undisturbed
by tears. From rotting hangings in Venice rats run, and that idle
wave of palace-stairs laps in listless leisure the fallen glories of
Veronese. As it is with painters so it is with poets, and wolf cubs
tear the pages of the last _Divine Comedy_ in the world. Rome is his
great agony, her shameful history falls before his eyes like a
painted curtain. All the inner nature of life is revealed to him, and
he sees into the heart of things as did Christ in the Garden of
Gethsemane--Christ, that most perfect symbol of the denial of the
will to live; and, like Christ, he cries that the world may pass from
him.

"But in resignation, hatred and horror vanish, and he muses again on
the more than human redemption, the great atonement that man has made
for his shameful life's history; and standing amid the orange and
almond trees, amid a profusion of bloom that the world seems to have
brought for thank-offering, amid an apparent and glorious victory of
inanimate nature, he falls down in worship of his race that had
freely surrendered all, knowing it to be nothing, and in surrender
had gained all.

"In that moment of intense consciousness a cry breaks the stillness,
and searching among the marbles he finds a dying woman. Gathering
some fruit, he gives her to eat, and they walk together, she
considering him as saviour and lord, he wrapped in the contemplation
of the end. They are the end, and all paling fascination, which is
the world, is passing from them, and they are passing from it. And
the splendour of gold and red ascends and spreads--crown and raiment
of a world that has regained its primal beauty.

"'We are alone,' the woman says. 'The world is ours; we are as king
and queen, and greater than any king or queen.'

"Her dark olive skin changes about the neck like a fruit near to
ripen, and the large arms, curving deeply, fall from the shoulder in
super