though
Heaven knows she had enough for two, and was dying to share it with
him. He went his way, and the way was tedious enough in those days.
Like a mirage, happiness glimmered before him, but his upright and
patient steps brought him no nearer to its alluring vista.

Youth is impatient and sanguine, and Jason, in his impetuous and
hopeful youth, besought the oracle, whose prophetic utterances seemed
to imply that his future and his fortune lay in some distant land,
and that it would be wise for him to seek it at once. Jason, like his
illustrious predecessor, resolved to go over the sea in search of the
golden fleece. It was the most adventurous thing he ever did, and Maud
thought it a hopeless and a willful act; yet she could do nothing
but hold her peace, while her poor heart was as near to breaking
as possible--much nearer to breaking than it is usually safe for a
maiden's heart to be.

So Jason gathered his mates--a reckless lot they were, too--and,
having laden his barque and swung into the stream, his men said their
final adieux, receiving quantities of pincushions and bookmarks, so
indispensable to Argonauts, as testimonials of eternal fidelity from
the maids of Dreamland.

Jason strode to the cottage and kissed the hand of Maud as if it
were the hand of a princess; after which, with much embarrassment, he
plucked a rose from her garden, while a pang pierced his heart till it
ached again, and a thorn probed his finger till a drop of blood
fell upon a myrtle leaf; which leaf Maud coveted, and keeps to this
day--hugged to her in her grave-clothes.

It is of course best that this life should not be perfect, for the
life to come might suffer by comparison; yet it is one of the cruelest
decrees of Nature--if Nature has really decreed what seems so wholly
against her--that a woman's heart must bide its time and be silent in
the presence of its natural mate while every attribute of her being
implores his recognition; and that the truest men are too honorable
or too proud to yield themselves, having no offering but their honest
love to lay at the feet of their mistresses. If it were not so, the
princess would not have mourned in her garden for her flown mate, and
there would have been much happiness on short notice.

Driven forth by the propitious winds, the barque fled from the shore,
while Maud, seated among her roses, with weeping and wringing of
hands, poured out upon the winds the burden of her love.

Why