on the sky, who sees
grey zones of cloud flush crimson before the sunrise, and at evening the
wide air richly glowing, moted as with the bloom of plums and the golden
pollen of all flowers?

At the end of that summer I returned to the occupations of life,
appeased and almost happy in this inheritance of new sympathies. And
before long I found that these were themselves but precursors of that
which was to come, and that like the paranymphs who escort the bride,
they did but apparel the heart for a deeper and more abiding joy. They
were busied about me in tranquil hours, and speaking not, but seeming to
wait in gladness for another, they made me serenely expectant also. They
destroyed all sadness of retrospect; they led me always forward; with
faces transparent with the light of an inward happiness they seemed to
promise a vision at each near bending of the way. From glad looks and
gestures assuring imminent joy, I too was charmed into a like faith, and
went on blithely in the confidence of a coming illumination. Nor was
that hope vain, for at length the mystery was made plain, and one day
they brought me exulting into the presence of the Ideal Love.

There is a place in every heart which must be filled by adoration, or
else the whole will grow hard and wither like a garden whose central
fountain is grown dry. And though the affection of mortal man or woman
may abandon it, there remains yet this other love which by pure and
strenuous invocation may be drawn to it, and dwell in it, to the
ennoblement of life; so great is the care of providence for mortal need.
Love is our need, and it is given, if we despair not of it, even to such
as have rarely felt the glow of earthly passion. For love is of many
kinds; yet the palest and most subtle of its forms are made real to
those who believe, and may become the guiding influences of their lives.
Such are the visions of the ideal love to which those glad natural
sympathies now led me, leaving me alone awhile that I might worship the
orient light. And when I came out from that presence I rejoiced indeed,
for the path was clear for my return, and life was now glad with promise
like an orchard burgeoning with white blossoms. Old memories crowded
back on me of hours beneath the cedars with the Phaedrus and the Vita
Nuova, hours made happy with intellectual and austere delights. But now
the joy was other than intellectual, though significant tenfold, for
then in untried youth I had won