k, a message foretold to me of
this magic future, full of intangible fears, wherein I am to live with
you?

XXXI

PHILIP TO JESSICA

Love is a mystic worker of miracles, O my sweet visionary! for on that
very day when you dreamed yourself away to me I beheld you suddenly
standing before me, so life-like and appearing so wistfully beautiful that
I reached out my hand to touch you--but grasped only the impalpable air.
All day and late into the night I had been reading and reflecting, seeking
in the ways of thought some word of comfort for the human heart, until at
last my consciousness became confused. It often happens thus. So real is
this search for some truth outside of me, that it seems as if my soul were
a thing apart from me, a thing which left me to go alone on its dim and
perilous way. I behold it as it were a shadow floating away from me out
into that abyss of shadows which are the thoughts of many men long dead.
And on this occasion the silence into which the Searcher went forth was
vaster and more obscure than ever before, filled with unfathomable
darkness as a clear night might look wherein no moon or stars appeared,
and so lonely "that God himself scarce seemed to be there."

Then, as often when this mood comes upon me, I went out to walk under the
hard flaring lights and amid the streaming crowds of Broadway, in order to
bring back the sense of mortal illusion and unite myself once more to
human existence. The people were pouring from the theatres, and I sought
the densest throng. But still I could not awaken in myself the illusion of
life. And then suddenly, without warning, there in the noisy brawl of the
street, I beheld you standing before me, looking into my face and smiling.
You wore a burning Southern rose upon your breast and were more wondrously
and delicately fair than the dream of poets. And there was a smile upon
your lips as if to say: "Dear Philip, thou hast put away the pleasures and
loveliness of this world as they had been a snaring web of illusion; yet I
do but look upon thee, and forthwith thou art pierced with love and know
that in this scorned desire of beauty dwells the great reality." I reached
out my hand to touch the rose against your heart, but the vision was gone,
and all about me was only the tumultuous mockery of the street.
Sweetheart, you have smitten me with remorse. Shall I take from you only
happiness, and give in return only this spectral dread? Ah, you shall
le