f
fire should she be torn asunder, but beneath the kind breath of the sun,
and the gentle tears of the rain, might she change and change, and on
the wings of soft winds might she be carried to and fro in fragrance
about the world.

And perhaps in the old Christian's mind there was an imagination of a
mysterious recreation in the earth, which when the dust has quite
returned to dust, should begin anew the building of an incorruptible
Jenny, lying prepared there like a new garment, against the hour when
the soul should seek anew its earthly vesture for the last great day.
Thus strangely will imagination build its dreams in defiance of
imagination.

And in what different ways will love argue with itself! This way of the
flames, that brought such a terror to the poor mother, was one of the
great consolations of the lover; and when at length on the morrow Jenny
was no longer to be sought in her room, and the darkened house was once
more filled with an empty light that was crueller than darkness, it
brought a sense of warmth to think that Jenny was not lying stark and
lonely out in that bitter churchyard, where the graves were covered
with sheets of snow and hung with hoods of ice, but that through the
cleansing gates of flame she had passed into the eternal elements, and
was already about the business of the dreaming spring.

And in other ways this proved a consolation that never failed him. It
saved his love from those cruel foulnesses of the grave which had
haunted Jenny. That cleansing fire cleansed his fancies too. However
morbid his fancies might become, _desiderium_ could never take any but
beautiful forms. Jenny could never come to him in any fearful images of
corruption, nor could he picture her in any mouldering shape of catacomb
or charnel.

She had come like a sylph out of the air, and she had returned again
whence she came. She had moved awhile about certain ever sacred rooms,
and as she moved she had hummed a little song, which was her life; she
had touched certain objects, she had written her name in some books,
she had made little everlasting memories with her hands,--that was her
history; and now suddenly she had gone. She had come like a dream, and
she had gone like a dream. The invisible winds had for a while rocked a
flower, and now the flower was gone. Only its perfume remained. No one
as long as the world lasted could take up some crumbling relic, and,
giving the lie to love's divine answer to the d