arn that I am very real, very earthly, capable of love and tenderness
and daily duties and quiet human sympathies! I told you of the dualism
into which my life, into which, indeed, every man's life, is cast; why
will you persist in clinging to that part which is cold and inhuman
instead of seizing upon that which is warm and very near by? I would not
take you with me into those bleak ways where always there is fear lest our
personality be swallowed up in the dark impersonal abyss. I would love you
as a man loves a woman and cleaves to her. Nay, more, I perceive dimly in
that love a strange reconcilement wherein the dual forces of my nature
shall be made one, wherein truth and beauty shall blend together in a
kiss, and there shall be no more seeking in obscurity, but only peace.

When the vision faded from me on Broadway, I turned back to my home, and
there, before the dawn came, tried to write out in words one thought of
the many that thronged upon me. I have almost forgotten the art of making
rhymes if ever I knew it.

A RECONCILIATION

All beauteous things the world's allurement knows:
Starred Venus, when she droops on Tyrian couch
While Evening draws her dusky curtains close,
Or pearled from morning bath she seems to crouch;

In bleak November one strayed violet;
The rathe spring-beauty scattered wide like snow;
The opal in a cirque of diamonds set;
Rare silken gowns that rustle as they flow;

The dumb thrush brooding in her lilac hedge;
The wild hawk towering in his proudest flight;
A silver fountain splashed o'er mossy ledge;
The sunrise flaming on an Alpine height;--

All these I've seen, yet never learned, till now
In thy sweet smiling, to accord my vow
Austere of truth with beauty's charmed delight.

XXXII

JESSICA TO PHILIP

WRITTEN IN ANSWER TO LETTER XXIX

MY DEAR PHILIP:

You are a magician rather than a lover. And no lover, I think, was ever so
subtle at reasoning. At least you do not act the part as I supposed it was
played. A lover, I thought, was one who stood at the door of a woman's
heart and serenaded till she crept out upon her little balcony of sighs
and kissed her hand to him, or shed a tokening bloom upon his upturned
countenance. So far as I could imagine, he was prehistoric in the
simp