ty, nor security; which, for a few days of mad
exultation, cost him a thousand bewildering, desolating fears. Did he
guess that when one most eagerly desires happiness, one is most near to
it? Already, he remembered, with a sudden pallor, and a sharp
contraction of the lips, that death, in time, would certainly claim both
of them, and his soul was pierced at the thought, for nothing seemed
imaginably so perfect as the wild gladness of that poor human hour then
gliding, with pitiless beats, toward the past. Already the moon had
ceased to weave her magic; the sun rose over the unrebukable sea, and
the distant coast, obscured in a purple vapour, seemed but a line of
darkness against the flushed horizon. The sky was grey, opalescent in
the north, tenderest green and azure in the east, while large,
motionless clouds, as blue as vine-clad hills, shadowed in great
clusters the vast canopy. But if the dawn of day wrought a progressive
disenchantment of the dreamer, Robert felt with the recurrence of the
morning the usual prayer rise to his lips in a long weeping,
inarticulate cry to God--"Thou knowest that I love Thee: Thou knowest
that all my life is but a desire of Thee: Thy Will, not mine." And he
heard again the promise: "_Thou art My servant, I have chosen thee, and
not cast thee away. Fear thou not, for I am with thee: be not dismayed,
for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee: yea, I will help thee._" As
the silent disquietude of night gave place to the intense tranquillity
of day, the impenetrable secret of life, though still profound,
unviolated, and eluding, was hidden in a shining, though not a blinding,
mist. Was night less night because it paled gloriously before the sun?
Was day less day because it darkened into evening? Was joy a false thing
because it passed? Did not sorrow pass also? If that sweet journey was
the first and last in all his life, was it not still a miracle of
blessing, nay, every blessing, to have known even once the power of
mortal happiness?

"What are you thinking of?" asked Brigit suddenly, touching his arm with
her hand.

"I am thinking that there is but one way of resisting the woe of
life--the infinite must oppose the infinite. Infinite sorrow must be met
by infinite love."

"I suppose we have the sorrow, and the infinite love is God's. We
mustn't call even our love infinite, Robert."

He hesitated for a few moments before he replied--

"I call it no name."

"Still," she said, "the