ving clutch. It was
not the fashion to love greatly. One of the leading scientists of my
time and of my profession had written: "There is nothing particularly
holy about love." So far as I had given thought to the subject, I had,
perhaps, agreed with him. It is easy for a physician to agree to
anything which emphasizes the visible, and erases the invisible fact.
If there were any one form of the universal delusion more than all
others "gone out" in the days of which I speak, it was the dear,
old-fashioned delirium called loving at first sight. I was never
exactly a scoffer; but I had mocked at this fable as other men of my
sort mock,--a subject for prophylactics, like measles or scarlet fever;
and when you said that, you had said the whole. Be it, then, recorded,
be it admitted, without let or hindrance, that I, Esmerald Thorne,
physician and surgeon, forty-five years old, and of sane mind, did love
that one woman, and her only, and her always, from the moment that my
unworthy eyes first looked into her own, as she knelt before me on the
moss beside the mountain brook,--from that moment to this hour.

CHAPTER II.

Thus half in perfect poetry, part in simplest prose, opened the first
canto of that long song which has made music in me; which has made
music of me, since that happy night. Of the countless words which we
have exchanged together in times succeeding, these, the few of our
first meeting are carved upon my brain as salutations are carved in
stone above the doorways of mansions. He that has loved as I did, may
say why this should be so, if he can. I cannot. Time and storm beat
against these inscriptions, and give them other colouring,--the tints
of years and weather; but while the house lasts and the rock holds the
salutation lives. In most other matters, the force of recurring
experience weakens association. He who loves cherishes the first words
of the beloved as he cherishes her last.

The situation was simple enough: an injured man and a lovely woman,
guests of the same summer hotel; a slow recovery; a leisurely sweet
acquaintance; the light that never was on hill or shore; and so the
charm was wrought. My accident held me a prisoner for six weeks. But
my love put me in chains in six minutes.

Her name was Helen; like hers of old

"Who fired the topmost towers of Ilium."

I liked the stately name of her, for she was of full
womanhood,--thirty-three years old; the age at which the