ld not, I dared not look at Preciosa through the spectacles. It
was not possible for me deliberately to destroy them; but I awoke in
the night, and could almost have cursed my dear old grandfather for
his gift. I escaped from the office, and sat for whole days with
Preciosa. I told her the strange things I had seen with my mystic
glasses. The hours were not enough for the wild romances which I raved
in her ear. She listened, astonished and appalled. Her blue eyes
turned upon me with a sweet deprecation. She clung to me, and then
withdrew, and fled fearfully from the room. But she could not stay
away. She could not resist my voice, in whose tones burned all the
love that filled my heart and brain. The very effort to resist the
desire of seeing her as I saw everybody else, gave a frenzy and an
unnatural tension to my feeling and my manner. I sat by her side,
looking into her eyes, smoothing her hair, folding her to my heart,
which was sunken and deep--why not forever?--in that dream of peace. I
ran from her presence, and shouted, and leaped with joy, and sat the
whole night through, thrilled into happiness by the thought of her
love and loveliness, like a wind-harp, tightly strung, and answering
the airiest sigh of the breeze with music. Then came calmer days--the
conviction of deep love settled upon our lives--as after the hurrying,
heaving days of spring, comes the bland and benignant summer.

"'It is no dream, then, after all, and we are happy,' I said to her,
one day; and there came no answer, for happiness is speechless.

"We are happy then," I said to myself, "there is no excitement now.
How glad I am that I can now look at her through my spectacles."

"I feared lest some instinct should warn me to beware.
I escaped from her arms, and ran home and seized the glasses and
bounded back again to Preciosa. As I entered the room I was heated, my
head was swimming with confused apprehension, my eyes must have
glared. Preciosa was frightened, and rising from her seat, stood with
an inquiring glance of surprise in her eyes. But I was bent with
frenzy upon my purpose. I was merely aware that she was in the room. I
saw nothing else. I heard nothing. I cared for nothing, but to see her
through that magic glass, and feel at once, all the fulness of
blissful perfection which that would reveal. Preciosa stood before the
mirror, but alarmed at my wild and eager movements, unable to
distinguish what I had in my hands, and seeing m