quick effort
to regain it lent it an impetus that shot it far into the water. It
had done its work and was gone forever. The beautiful princess was
once more a vague speck across a mile of rapid river; now, even the
speck had moved beyond the trees and was out of sight!

The episode had come so unexpected, and so quickly passed, that now it
seemed never to have been at all! But Helwyse had yielded himself
unreservedly to the influence of the moment. Following so aptly the
fanciful creation of his thought, the apparition had acquired peculiar
significance. The abrupt disappearance afflicted him like a positive
loss.

Did he, then, soberly believe himself and the princess to have
exchanged glances (not to speak of thoughts) across a river a mile
wide? Perhaps he merely courted a fancy from which the test of reason
was deliberately withheld. Spirits not being amenable to material
laws, what was the odds (so far as exchange of spiritual sentiment
was concerned) whether the prince and princess were separated by miles
or inches?

But however plausible the fancy, it was over. Helwyse leaned back on
the rock, drew his hat over his eyes, folded his hands beneath his
head, and appeared to sleep.

XIV.

THE TOWER OF BABEL.

In a perfect state of society, where people will think and act in
harmony with only the purest aesthetic laws, a knowledge of stenography
and photography will suffice for the creation of perfect works of art.
But until that epoch comes, the artist must be content to do the
grouping, toning, and proportioning of his picture for himself, under
penalty of redundancy and confusion. People nowadays seldom do or
think the right thing at the fitting moment; insomuch that the
biographer, if he would be intelligible, must use his own discretion
in arranging his materials.

Now, in view of the rough shaking which late events had given Balder
and his opinions, it is doing no violence to probability to fancy him
taking an early opportunity to pass these opinions in review. It would
be easy, by a glance at the magic ring, to reproduce his meditations
just as they passed through his brain. Brevity and pertinence,
however, counsel us to recall a dialogue which had taken place about
three years before.

Balder and his father were then in the North of England; and the
latter (who never concerned himself with any save the plainest and
most practical philosophy) was not a little startled at an analogy
drawn