g old age. Here was Amaryllis, full of poetic feeling and half a
painter at heart, full of generous sentiments--what a nature to be
ground down in the sordidness of married poverty!

Here was Amadis, extremely poor, quite feeble, and unable to earn a
shilling, just talking of seeing the doctor again about this fearful
debility, full too, as he thought at least, of ideas--what a being to
think of her!

Nothing ever happens in the fitness of things. If only now he could have
regained the health and strength of six short months ago--if only that,
but you see, he had not even that. He might get better; true--he
_might_, I have tried 80 drugs and I am no better, I hope he will.

Could any blundering Sultan in the fatalistic East have put things
together for them with more utter contempt of fitness? It is all in the
Turkish manner, you see.

There they sat, happier and happier, and deeper and deeper in love every
moment, on the brown timber in the long grass, their hearts as full of
love as the meadow was of sunshine.

You have heard of the Sun's Golden Cup, in which after sunset he was
carried over Ocean's stream, while we slumber in the night, to land
again in the East and give us the joy of his rising. The great Golden
Cup in which Hercules, too, was taken over; it was as if that Cup had
been filled to the brim with the nectar of love and placed at the lips
to drink, inexhaustible.

In the play of Faust--Alere's _Faust_--Goethe has put an interlude, an
Intermezzo; I shall leave Amaryllis and Amadis in their Interlude in
Heaven. Let the Play of Human Life, with its sorrows and its Dread,
pause awhile; let Care go aside behind the wings, let Debt and Poverty
unrobe, let Age stand upright, let Time stop still (oh, Miracle! as the
Sun did in the Vale of Ajalon). Let us leave our lovers in the Interlude
in Heaven.

And as I must leave them (I trust but for a little while) I will leave
them on the brown oak timber, sap-stain brown, in the sunshine and
dancing shadow of summer, among the long grass and the wild flowers.

CHISWICK PRESS:--C. WHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKS COURT,
CHANCERY LANE.

Duckworth & Co.'s "Crown" Library

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