om of an unlearned heart.

XXIII.

BALDER TELLS AN UNTRUTH.

By way of enheartening himself for what he was to do, Balder kissed
the posy of Gnulemah's fragrant footsteps. He kept his eyes down, lest
she should see something in them to distract her attention from his
story. He must go artfully to work,--gain her assent to the abstract
principles before marshalling them against himself.

Meanwhile Gnulemah had picked up a gold beetle, and was examining it
with a certain grave interest.

"I never told you how I came by this ring of Hiero's. It was the night
before I first saw you, Gnulemah."

"The ring guided you to me!" said she, glancing at his downcast
visage.

"Perhaps it did!" he muttered, struck by the ingenious superstition;
and he eyed the keen diamond half suspiciously. How fiercely the
little serpents were struggling for it! "But Hiero--he has lost it,
and you will see him no more!"

"You are with me!" returns she, shining out at him from beneath her
level brows. What should she know of death and parting?

Balder still forbore to raise his face. Gnulemah was in a frolicsome
humor, the reaction of her foregoing solemnity. But Balder, who deemed
this hour the gravest of his life, was taken aback by her unseasonable
gayety. Casting about for means to sober her,--an ungracious thing for
a lover to do!--he hit upon the gold beetle.

"Dead; the poor little beetle! Do you know what death is, Gnulemah?"

"It is what makes life. The sun dies every night, to get life for the
morning. And trees die when cold comes, so as to smile out in green
leaves again,--greener than if there had been no death. So it is with
all things."

"Not with everything," said Balder, taking her light-heartedness very
gravely. "That gold beetle in your hand is dead, and will never live
or move again."

But at that Gnulemah smiled; and bringing her hand, with the beetle in
it, near her perfect lips, she lent it a full warm breath,--enough to
have enlivened an Egyptian scarabaeus,--and behold! the beetle spread
its wings and whizzed away. Before Balder could recover from this
unexpected refutation, the lovely witch followed up her advantage.

"You thought, perhaps, that Hiero was as dead as the little beetle;
but he lives more beautifully in you!"

He looked startled up, his large eyes glittering blackly in the
paleness of his face. Gnulemah, with the serenity of a victorious
disputant willing to make allowances, continue