f--was it not?--and has been wooing yours all this while!--till the
sleeper awakened, the well-spring leapt up from the earth; and our two
wishes united dare the world to divide them. What can? My wish was your
destiny, yours is mine. We are one.' He poetized on his passion, and
dramatized it: 'Stood you at the altar, I would pluck you from the man
holding your hand! There is no escape for you. Nay, into the vaults,
were you to grow pale and need my vital warmth--down to the vaults!
Speak--or no: look! That will do. You hold a Titan in your eyes, like
metal in the furnace, to turn him to any shape you please, liquid or
solid. You make him a god: he is the river Alvan or the rock Alvan: but
fixed or flowing, he is lord of you. That is the universal penalty: you
must, if you have this creative soul, be the slave of your creature:
if you raise him to heaven, you must be his! Ay, look! I know the eyes!
They can melt granite, they can freeze fire. Pierce me, sweet eyes! And
now flutter, for there is that in me to make them.'

'Consider!' Clotilde flutteringly entreated him.

'The world? you dear heaven of me! Looking down on me does not
compromise you, and I am not ashamed of my devotions. I sat in gloom:
you came: I saw my goddess and worshipped. The world, Lutece, the world
is a variable monster; it rends the weak whether sincere or false;
but those who weld strength with sincerity may practise their rites of
religion publicly, and it fawns to them, and bellows to imitate. Nay, I
say that strength in love is the sole sincerity, and the world knows it,
muffs it in the air about us, and so we two are privileged. Politically
also we know that strength is the one reality: the rest is shadow.
Behind the veil of our human conventions power is constant as ever, and
to perceive the fact is to have the divining rod-to walk clear of shams.
He is the teacher who shows where power exists: he is the leader who
wakens and forms it. Why have I unfailingly succeeded?--I never doubted!
The world voluntarily opens a path to those who step determinedly.
You--to your honour?--I won't decide--but you have the longest in my
experience resisted. I have a Durandal to hew the mountain walls; I
have a voice for ears, a net for butterflies, a hook for fish, and
desperation to plunge into marshes: but the feu follet will not be
caught. One must wait--wait till her desire to have a soul bids her come
to us. She has come! A soul is hers: and see how, i