d measured motion--and
the huntsman, puzzled and alarmed, was just about to spring to the
rescue, when he was stopped by perceiving the expression on the lady's
face.

"For it was life her eyes were drinking . . .
Life's pure fire, received without shrinking,
Into the heart and breast whose heaving
Told you no single drop they were leaving."

The life had passed into her very hair, which was thrown back, loose
over each shoulder,

"And the very tresses shared in the pleasure,
Moving to the mystic measure,
Bounding as the bosom bounded."

He stopped short, perplexed, "as she listened and she listened." But all
at once he felt himself struck by the self-same contagion:

"And I kept time to the wondrous chime,
Making out words and prose and rhyme,
Till it seemed that the music furled
Its wings like a task fulfilled, and dropped
From under the words it first had propped."

He could hear and understand, "word took word as hand takes hand"--and
the Gipsy said:

"And so at last we find my tribe,
And so I set thee in the midst . . .
I trace them the vein and the other vein
That meet on thy brow and part again,
Making our rapid mystic mark;
And I bid my people prove and probe
Each eye's profound and glorious globe
Till they detect the kindred spark
In those depths so dear and dark . . .
And on that round young cheek of thine
I make them recognise the tinge . . .
For so I prove thee, to one and all,
Fit, when my people ope their breast,
To see the sign, and hear the call,
And take the vow, and stand the test
Which adds one more child to the rest--
When the breast is bare and the arms are wide,
And the world is left outside."

There would be probation (said the Gipsy), and many trials for the lady
if she joined the tribe; but, like the jewel-finder's "fierce assay" of
the stone he finds, like the "vindicating ray" that leaps from it:

"So, trial after trial past,
Wilt thou fall at the very last
Breathless, half in trance
With the thrill of the great deliverance,
Into our arms for evermore;
And thou shalt know, those arms once curled
About thee, what we knew before,
_How love is the only good in the world_.
Henceforth be loved as heart can love,
Or brain devise, or hand approve!
Stand up, look below,