ts of evil; for surely it is a supernatural
stranger in our midst, a fairy element, and, like the lorelei and the
lamia, it does beckon its votaries to enchanted realms away and afar
from "all the uses of the world." Therefore, to them also it brings the
thrill of a different and nobler fear--the thrill of the mortal in
presence of the immortal. A strange feeling of destiny seems to come
over us as we first look into the beautiful face we were born to love.
It seems veritably an apparition from another and lovelier world, to
which it summons us to go with it. That is what we mean when we say that
Love and Death are one; for Death, to the thought of Love, is but one of
the gates to that other world, a gate to which we instinctively feel
Love has the key. That surely is the meaning of the old fairy-stories of
men who have come upon the white woman in the woodland, and followed
her, never to be seen again of their fellows, or of those who, like
Hylas, have met the water-nymph by the lilied spring, and sunk with her
down into the crystal deeps. The strange earth on which we live is just
such a place of enchantment, neither more nor less, and some of us have
met that fair face, with a strange suddenness of joy and fear, and
followed and followed it on till it vanished beyond the limits of the
world. But our failure was that we did not follow that last white
beckoning of the hand--

And I awoke and found me here
On the cold hill's side.

VIII

THE MANY FACES--THE ONE DREAM

Among the many advantages of being very young is one's absolute
certainty that there is only one type of beautiful girl in the world.
That type we make a religion. We are its pugnacious champions, and the
idea of our falling in love with any other is too preposterous even for
discussion. If our tastes happen to be for blondness, brunettes simply
do not exist for us; and if we affect the slim and willowy in figure,
our contempt for the plump and rounded is too sincere for expression.
Usually the type we choose is one whose beauty is somewhat esoteric to
other eyes. We are well aware that photographs do it no justice, and
that the man in the street--who, strangely enough, we conceive as having
no eye for beauty--can see nothing in it. Thank Heaven, she is not the
type that any common eye can see. Heads are not turned in her wake as
she passes along. Her beauty is not "obvious." On the contrary, it is of
that rare and exquis