chambers within sound of the
city clocks, and had lived the life of a lonely man about town, sinking
more and more into the comfortable sloth of bachelorhood. I had long
come to look back upon my pilgrimage as a sort of Indian-summer youth,
being, as the reader can reckon for himself, just on thirty-seven. As
one will, with one's most serious experiences, hastening to laugh lest
one should weep, as the old philosopher said, I had made some fun out
of my quest, in the form of a paper for a bookish society to which I
belonged, on "Woman as a Learned Pursuit." It is printed among the
transactions of the society, and is accessible to the curious only by
loan from the members, and I regret that I am unable to print any
extracts here. Perhaps when I am dead the society will see the
criminal selfishness of reserving for itself what was meant for mankind.

Meanwhile, however, it is fast locked and buried deep in the archives
of the club. I have two marriages to record in the interval: one that
of a young lady whom I must still think of as 'Nicolete' to Sir
Marmaduke Pettigrew, Bart., of Dultowers Hall, and the other the
well-known marriage of Sylvia Joy...

Sylvia Joy married after all her fine protestations! Yes! but I'm sure
you will forgive her, for she was married to a lord. When one is twenty
and romantic one would scorn a woman who would jilt us for wealth and
position; at thirty, one would scorn any woman who didn't. Ah me! how
one changes! No one, I can honestly say, was happier over these two
weddings than I, and I sent Sylvia her petticoat as a wedding present.

But it was to tell of other matters that I reopen this book and once
more take up my pen--matters so near to my heart that I shrink from
writing of them, and am half afraid that the attempt may prove too hard
for me after all, and my book end on a broken cry of pain. Yet, at the
same time, I want to write of them, for they are beautiful and solemn,
and good food for the heart.

Besides, though my pilgrimage had been ended so long, they are really a
part, yea, the part for which, though I knew it not, all the rest has
been written--for they tell how I came to find by accident her whom so
long I had sought of design.

How shall I tell of Thee who, first and last of all women, gave and
awoke in me that love which is the golden key of the world, the mystic
revelation of the holy meaning of life, love that alone may pass
through the awful gates of t