n his
father's shoulder--a threefold harmony of strength and beauty and
innocence.

Silently the roseate light caressed the tall spires of the
cypress-trees; silently the shadows gathered at their feet; silently
the crystal stars looked out from the deepening arch of heaven. The
very breath of being paused. It was the hour of culmination, the
supreme moment of felicity waiting for its crown. The tones of
Hermas were clear and low as he began, half speaking and half
chanting, in the rhythm of an ancient song:

"Fair is the world, the sea, the sky, the double kingdom of day and
night, in the glow of morning, in the shadow of evening, and under
the dripping light of stars.

"Fairer still is life in our breasts, with its manifold music and
meaning, with its wonder of seeing and hearing and feeling and
knowing and being.

"Fairer and still more fair is love, that draws us together, mingles
our lives in its flow, and bears them along like a river, strong and
clear and swift, rejecting the stars in its bosom.

"Wide is our world; we are rich; we have all things. Life is
abundant within us--a measureless deep. Deepest of all is our
love, and it longs to speak.

"Come, thou final word! Come, thou crown of speech! Come, thou charm
of peace! Open the gates of our hearts. Lift the weight of our joy
and bear it upward.

"For all good gifts, for all perfect gifts, for love, for life, for
the world, we praise, we bless, we thank--"

As a soaring bird, struck by an arrow, falls headlong from the sky,
so the song of Hermas fell. At the end of his flight of gratitude
there was nothing--a blank, a hollow space.

He looked for a face, and saw a void. He sought for a hand, and
clasped vacancy. His heart was throbbing and swelling with passion;
the bell swung to and fro within him, beating from side to side as
if it would burst; but not a single note came from it. All the
fulness of his feeling, that had risen upward like a living
fountain, fell back from the empty sky, as cold as snow, as hard as
hail, frozen and dead. There was no meaning in his happiness. No one
had sent it to him. There was no one to thank for it. His felicity
was a closed circle, a wall of eternal ice.

"Let us go back," he said sadly to Athenais; "the child is heavy
upon my shoulder. We will lay him to sleep, and go into the library.
The air grows chilly. We were mistaken. The gratitude of life is
only a dream. There is no one to thank."

And in the ga