y, he went on thinking, love is the master-key that
opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily
of all, the gate of fear. How terrible is the one fact of beauty!--not
only the historic wonder of beauty, that "burnt the topless towers of
Ilium" for the smile of Helen, and fired the palaces of Babylon by the
hand of Thais, but the beauty which springs up in all times and places,
and carries a torch and wears a serpent for a wreath as truly as any
of the Eumenides. Paint Beauty with her foot upon a skull and a dragon
coiled around her.

The doctor smiled at his own imposing classical allusions and pictorial
imagery. Drifting along from thought to thought, he reflected on the
probable consequences of the general knowledge of Maurice Kirkwood's
story, if it came before the public.

What a piece of work it would make among the lively youths of the
village, to be sure! What scoffing, what ridicule, what embellishments,
what fables, would follow in the trail of the story! If the Interviewer
got hold of it, how "The People's Perennial and Household Inquisitor"
would blaze with capitals in its next issue! The young fellows' of
the place would be disposed to make fun of the whole matter. The young
girls-the doctor hardly dared to think what would happen when the story
got about among them. "The Sachem" of the solitary canoe, the bold
horseman, the handsome hermit,--handsome so far as the glimpses they had
got of him went,--must needs be an object of tender interest among them,
now that he was ailing, suffering, in danger of his life, away from
friends,--poor fellow! Little tokens of their regard had reached his
sick-chamber; bunches of flowers with dainty little notes, some of them
pinkish, some three-cornered, some of them with brief messages, others
"criss-crossed," were growing more frequent as it was understood that
the patient was likely to be convalescent before many days had passed.
If it should come to be understood that there was a deadly obstacle to
their coming into any personal relations with him, the doctor had his
doubts whether there were not those who would subject him to the risk;
for there were coquettes in the village,--strangers, visitors, let us
hope,--who would sacrifice anything or anybody to their vanity and love
of conquest.

XXI. AN INTIMATE CONVERSATION.

The illness from which Maurice had suffered left him in a state of
profound prostration. The doctor, who remembere