ok lasted only a second
or two; but it left me dazzled as that king in the Eastern tale, who
seemed to have lived whole dream-lives between dipping his head into a
bowl of water and taking it out again. Similarly in that moment I
seemed to have dived into this unknown girl's eyes, to have walked
through the treasure palaces of her soul, to have stood before the
flaming gates of her heart, to have gathered silver flowers in the
fairy gardens of her dreams. I had followed her white-robed spirit
across the moonlit meadows of her fancy, and by her side had climbed
the dewy ladder of the morning star, and then suddenly I had been
whirled up again to the daylight through the magic fountains of her
eyes.

I'll tell you more about that look presently! Meanwhile the gig
approached, and the two girls exchanged affectionate greetings.

"Tom hasn't come with you, then?" said the other girl, who was
evidently her sister, and who was considerably more rustic in style and
accent. She said it with a curious mixture of anxiety and relief.

"No," answered the other simply, and I thought I noticed a slight
darkening of her face. Tom was evidently her husband. So she was
married!

"Yes!" said a fussy hypocrite of reason within me, "and what's that to
do with you?"

"Everything, you fool!" answered a robuster voice in my soul, kicking
the feeble creature clean out of my head on the instant.

For, absurd as it may sound, with that look into those Arabian Nights'
eyes, had come somewhere out of space an overwhelming intuition, nay,
an unshakable conviction, that the woman who was already being rolled
away from me down the road in that Dis's car of a farmer's gig, was now
and for ever and before all worlds the woman God had created for me,
and that, unless I could be hers and she mine, there would be no home,
no peace for either of us so long as we lived.

And yet she was being carried away further and further every moment,
while I gazed after her, aimlessly standing in the middle of the road.
Why did I not call to her, overtake her? In a few moments she would be
lost to me for ever--

Though I was unaware of it, this hesitation was no doubt owing to a
stealthy return of reason by the back-door of my mind. In fact, he
presently dared to raise his voice again. "I don't deny," he ventured,
ready any moment to flee for his life, "that she is written yours in
all the stars, and particularly do I see it written on the face of the