-eater while the poison works;
the joy of him who after suffering long nights of pain has found their
antidote, and perhaps for the first time appreciates the worth of peace,
however empty. His troubled heart had ceased its striving, his wrecked
nerves were still, his questionings had been answered, his ends were
attained; he had drunk of the divine cup which he desired, and its wine
flowed through him. The dead had visited him, and he had tasted of the
delight which lies hid in death. On that day he felt as though nothing
could hurt him any more, nothing could even move him. The angry voices,
the wars, the struggles, the questionings--all the things which torment
mankind; what did they matter? He had forced the lock and broken the
bar; if only for a little while, the door had opened, and he had seen
that which he desired to see and sought with all his soul, and with the
wondrous harvest of this pure, inhuman passion, that owes nothing to
sex, or time, or earth, he was satisfied at last.

"Why did you look so strange in church?" asked Mary as they walked home,
and her voice echoed in the spaces of his void mind as words echo in an
empty hall.

His thoughts were wandering far, and with difficulty he drew them back,
as birds tied by the foot are drawn back and, still fluttering to be
free, brought home to the familiar cage.

"Strange, dear?" he answered; "did I look strange?"

"Yes; like a man in a dream or the face of a saint being comfortably
martyred in a picture. Morris, I believe that you are not well. I will
speak to the doctor. He must give you a tonic, or something for your
liver. Really, to see you and that old mummy Mr. Fregelius staring at
each other while he murmured away about the delights of the world to
come, and how happy we ought to be at the thought of getting there, made
me quite uncomfortable."

"Why? Why, dear?" asked Morris, vacantly.

"Why? Because the old man with his pale face and big eyes looked more
like an astral body than a healthy human being; if I met him in his
surplice at night, I should think he was a ghost, and upon my word,
you are catching the same expression. That comes of your being so much
together. Do be a little more human and healthy. Lose your temper; swear
at the cook like your father; admire Jane Rose's pretty bonnet, or her
pretty face; take to horse-racing, do anything that is natural, even if
it is wicked. Anything that doesn't make one think of graves, and stars,
an