ear--what are these to a youth, with his eyes on the face of the
eternal Helen?--that face we meet once and once only, and either win--to
lose all the rest, or lose--and win what? What is there to win if that
be lost? So, at all events, it was with me, who, after winging away from
those old gables yonder on all the adventurous winds of the seven seas,
and having in truth looked into many a fair face in every corner of the
globe, suddenly, in a certain little island of the French West Indies,
came upon the face I had been unconsciously seeking.

"So, long years before my coming, had it befallen also with a certain
young French nobleman, out there on military service, who had set eyes
on Calypso's grandmother in the streets of that quaint little town,
where the French soul seems almost more at home than in France itself.
All had seemed nothing to him--his ancestral ties, his brilliant
future--compared with that glory of a woman. He married her and settled
down for good, the world well lost, in that dream island. And the dream
he had been faithful to remained faithful to him. He seems to have been
a singularly happy man. I never saw him, for he was dead when I set foot
on his island--destined, though I knew it not, to live his life again in
the love of his daughter.

"She and her mother were living quietly on the small fortune he had left
them, in an old palm-shaded house backed by purple mountains, and sung
to by the sea. The soul of old France seemed to haunt that old house
like a perfume, taking on a richer colour and drawing a more ardent life
from the passionate tropic soul that enfolded it. Both had mysteriously
met and become visibly embodied in the lovely girl, in whose veins the
best blood of France blended with the molten gold of tropic suns. So, as
had happened with her mother, again it happened with her--she took the
wandering man to her heart"--he paused--"held him there for some happy
years"--he paused again--"and the rest is--Calypso."

We did not speak for a long time after he had ended, but his confidence
had touched me so nearly that I felt I owed him my heart in exchange,
and it was hard not to cry out: "And now I love Calypso. Once more the
far-wandered man has found the great light on a lonely shore."

But I felt that to speak yet--believer in the miracle of love though he
had declared himself to be--would seem as though I set too slight a
value on the miracle itself.

There should be a long hush b