mortal bodies. But we know each
other, that we were together from the first, although these earthly
things obscure our immortal vision, and we see each other less clearly.
Yet is our love none the less--rather, it seems every day greater, for
our bodies can feel joy and sorrow, even as our spirits do; so that I am
able to suffer for you, in which I rejoice, and I would that I might be
chosen to lay down my life for you, that you might know how I love you;
for often you doubt me, and sometimes you doubt yourself. There should
be no doubt in love. Love is from the first, and will be to the end, and
beyond the end; love is so eternal, so great, so whole, that this mortal
life of ours is but as a tiny instant, a moment of pausing in our
journey from one star-world to another along the endless paths of
heavenly glory we shall tread, together--it is nothing, this worldly
life of ours. Before it shall seem long that we have loved, this earth
we stand on, these things we touch, these bodies of ours that we think
so strong and fair, will be forgotten and dissolved into their elements
in the trackless and undiscoverable waste of past mortality, while we
ourselves are ever young, and ever fair, and for ever living in our
immortal love."

Nehushta looked up wonderingly into her lover's eyes, then let her head
rest on his shoulder. The high daring of his thoughts seemed ever trying
to scale heaven itself, seeking to draw her to some wondrous region of
mystic beauty and strange spirit life. She was awed for a moment, then
she, too, spoke in her own fashion.

"I love life," she said, "I love you because you live, not because you
are a spirit chained and tied down for a time. I love this soft sweet
earth, the dawn of it, and the twilight of it; I love the sun in his
rising and in his setting; I love the moon in her fulness and in her
waning; I love the smell of the box and of the myrtle, of the roses and
of the violets; I love the glorious light of day, the splendour of heat
and greenness, the song of the birds of the air and the song of the
labourer in the field, the hum of the locust, and the soft buzzing of
the bee; I love the brightness of gold and the richness of fine purple,
the tramp of your splendid guards and the ring of their trumpets
clanging in the fresh morning, as they march through the marble courts
of the palace. I love the gloom of night for its softness, the song of
the nightingale in the ivory moonlight, the rustle