e to happiness, and he looked to her for it. Why should she
withhold from him a thing so easily given? The convalescent is receptive
and undesiring, or but very faintly desiring: the new blood coming into
the frame like first dawn of light has not stirred the old passions; it
is infant nature, with a tinge of superadded knowledge that is not cloud
across it and lends it only a tender wistfulness.

Her physician sentenced her to the Alps, whither a friend, a daughter of
our island, whose acquaintance she had made in Italy, was going, and
at an invitation Clotilde accompanied her, and she breathed Alpine air.
Marko sank into the category of dreams during sickness. There came a
letter from the professor mentioning that Alvan was on one of the kingly
Alpine heights in view, and the new blood running through her veins
became a torrent. He there! So near! Could he not be reached?

He had a saying: Two wishes make a will.

The wishes of two lovers, he meant. A prettier sentence for lovers, and
one more intoxicating to them, was never devised. It chirrups of the
dear silly couple. Well, this was her wish. Was it his? Young health on
the flow of her leaping blood cried out that it could not be other than
Alvan's wish; she believed in his wishing it. Then as he wished and she
wished, she had the will immediately, and it was all the more her own
for being his as well. She hurried her friend and her friend's
friends on horseback off to the heights where the wounded eagle lodged
overlooking mountain and lake. The professor reported him outwearied
with excess of work. Alvan lived the lives of three; the sins of thirty
were laid to his charge. Do you judge of heroes as of lesser men? Her
reckless defence of him, half spoken, half in her mind, helped her to
comprehend his dealings with her, and how it was that he stormed her and
consented to be beaten. He had a thousand occupations, an ambition out
of the world of love, chains to break, temptations, leanings... tut,
tut! She had not lived in her circle of society, and listened to
the tales of his friends and enemies, and been the correspondent of
flattering and flattered men of learning, without understanding how
a man like Alvan found diversions when forbidden to act in a given
direction: and now that her healthful new blood inspired the courage to
turn two wishes to a will, she saw both herself and him very clearly,
enough at least to pardon the man more than she did herself. She
h