ng her being and making her heart beat. It was
almost pain she experienced, the sensation was so intense, and Hector
read of these things in her eyes and was content. So he let his voice
grow softer still, and almost whispered again:

"And aren't you sorry for the prince--beautiful princess?"

"I am sorry for any one who suffers," said Theodora, gently, "even in a
fairy story."

And as he looked at her he thought to himself, here was a rare thing, a
beautiful woman with a tender heart. He knew she would be gentle and
kind to the meanest of God's creatures. And again the vision of her at
Bracondale came to him--his mother would grow to love her perhaps even
more than Morella Winmarleigh! How she would glorify everything
commonplace with those tender ways of hers! To look at her was like
looking up into the vast, pure sky, with the light of heaven beyond. And
yet he lay on the grass at her feet with his mind full of thoughts and
plans and desires to drag this angel down from her high heaven--into his
arms!

Because he was a man, you see, and the time of his awakening was not
yet.

X

Man is a hunter--a hunter always. He may be a poor thing and hunt only a
few puny aims, or he may be a strong man and choose big game. But he is
hunting, hunting--something--always.

And primitive life seems like the spectrum of light--composed of three
primary colors, and white and black at the beginning and ending of it.
And the three colors of blue, red, and yellow have their counterparts in
the three great passions in man--to hunt his food, to continue his
species, and to kill his enemy.

And white and black seem like birth and death--and there is the sun,
which is the soul and makes the colors, and allows of all combinations
and graduations of beautiful other shades from them for parallels to all
other qualities and instincts, only the original are those great primary
forces--to hunt his food, to continue his species, and to kill his
enemy.

And if this is so to the end of time, man will be the same, I suppose,
until civilization has emasculated the whole of nature and so ends the
world! Or until this wonderful new scientist has perfected his
researches to the point of creating human life by chemical process, as
well as his present discovery of animating jellyfish!

Who knows? But by that time it will not matter to any of us!

Meanwhile, man is at the stage that when he loves a woman he wishes to
possess her, and,