astoral
solitudes in the West, with the tinkling of sheep-bells in my ears, a
rounded hillock, seen vaguely, would shape itself into a cottage; and at
the door my monitory, regretful Hebe would appear. Did I wander by the
seashore, one gently-swelling wave in the vast heaving plain of waters
would suddenly transform itself into a cottage, and I, by some
involuntary inward impulse, would in fancy advance toward it.

Ah, reader, you will think this which I am going to say too near, too
holy, for recital. But not so. The deeper a woe touches me in heart, so
much the more am I urged to recite it. The world disappears: I see only
the grand reliques of a world--memorials of a love that has departed,
has been--the record of a sorrow that is, and has its greyness converted
into verdure--monuments of a wrath that has been reconciled, of a wrong
that has been atoned for--convulsions of a storm that has gone by. What
I am going to say is the most like a superstitious thing that I ever
shall say. And I have reason to think that every man who is not a
villain once in his life must be superstitious. It is a tribute which he
pays to human frailty, which tribute if he will not pay, which frailty
if he will not share, then also he shall not have any of its strength.

The face of this monitory Hebe haunted me for some years in a way that I
must faintly attempt to explain. It is little to say that it was the
sweetest face, with the most peculiar expression of sweetness, that I
had ever seen: that was much, but that was earthly. There was something
more terrific, believe me, than this; yet that was not the word: terror
looks to the future; and this perhaps did, but not primarily. Chiefly it
looked at some unknown past, and was for that reason awful; yes,
awful--that was the word.

Thus, on any of those heavenly sunny mornings, that now are buried in an
endless grave, did I, transported by no human means, enter that cottage,
and descend to that breakfast-room, my earliest salute was to her, that
ever, as the look of pictures do, with her eyes pursued me round the
room, and oftentimes with a subtle checking of grief, as if great sorrow
had been or would be hers. And it was, too, in the sweet Maytime. Oh
yes; she was but as if she had been--as if it were her original ...
chosen to have been the aurora of a heavenly clime; and then suddenly
she was as one of whom, for some thousand years, Paradise had received
no report; then, again, as if s