"the fate is fulfilled now, and the song
will never be sung again. She was the last of her race, and it was a law
among them that neither words nor music should ever be written down."

When such old tales and legends were exhausted, and, outside the
immediate object of their search, some of them were of great interest
to a man who, like Morris, had knowledge of Norse literature, and was
delighted to discover in Mr. Fregelius a scholar acquainted with the
original tongues in which they were written, these companions fell back
upon other matters. But all of them had to do with Stella. One night the
clergyman read some letters written by her as a child from Denmark.
On another he produced certain dolls which she had dressed at the same
period of her life in the costume of the peasants of that country. On a
third he repeated a piece of rather indifferent poetry composed by her
when she was a girl of sixteen. Its strange title was, "The Resurrection
of Dead Roses." It told how in its author's fancy the flowers which
were cut and cast away on earth bloomed again in heaven, never to wither
more; a pretty allegory, but treated in a childish fashion.

Thus, then, from time to time, as occasion offered, did this strange
pair celebrate the rites they thought so harmless, and upon the altar of
memory make offerings to their dead.

CHAPTER XX

STELLA'S DIARY

It seems to be a law of life that nothing can stand completely still and
changeless. All must vary, must progress or retrograde; the very rocks
in the bowels of the earth undergo organic alterations, while the
eternal hills that cover them increase or are worn away. Much more is
this obvious in the case of ephemeral man, of his thoughts, his works,
and everything wherewith he has to do, he who within the period of a few
short years is doomed to appear, wax, wane, and vanish.

Even the conversations of Mr. Fregelius and Morris were subject to
the working of this universal rule; and in obedience to it must travel
towards a climax, either of fruition, however unexpected, or, their
purpose served, whatever it may have been, to decay and death, for lack
of food upon which to live and flourish. The tiniest groups of impulses
or incidents have their goal as sure and as appointed as that of the
cluster of vast globes which form a constellation. Between them the
principal distinction seems to be one of size, and at present we are not
in a position to say which may be the most