s place, I mean,--and marry, and settle in a new home elsewhere for
good, and forget me, you must take these things, equatorial and all, and
never tell your wife or anybody how they came to be yours.'

'I wish I could do something more for you!' exclaimed the much-moved
astronomer. 'If you could but share my fame,--supposing I get any, which
I may die before doing,--it would be a little compensation. As to my
going away and marrying, I certainly shall not. I may go away, but I
shall never marry.'

'Why not?'

'A beloved science is enough wife for me,--combined, perhaps, with a
little warm friendship with one of kindred pursuits.'

'Who is the friend of kindred pursuits?'

'Yourself I should like it to be.'

'You would have to become a woman before I could be that, publicly; or I
a man,' she replied, with dry melancholy.

'Why I a woman, or you a man, dear Lady Constantine?'

'I cannot explain. No; you must keep your fame and your science all to
yourself, and I must keep my--troubles.'

Swithin, to divert her from melancholy--not knowing that in the
expression of her melancholy thus and now she found much
pleasure,--changed the subject by asking if they should take some
observations.

'Yes; the scenery is well hung to-night,' she said looking out upon the
heavens.

Then they proceeded to scan the sky, roving from planet to star, from
single stars to double stars, from double to coloured stars, in the
cursory manner of the merely curious. They plunged down to that at other
times invisible multitude in the back rows of the celestial theatre:
remote layers of constellations whose shapes were new and singular;
pretty twinklers which for infinite ages had spent their beams without
calling forth from a single earthly poet a single line, or being able to
bestow a ray of comfort on a single benighted traveller.

'And to think,' said Lady Constantine, 'that the whole race of shepherds,
since the beginning of the world,--even those immortal shepherds who
watched near Bethlehem,--should have gone into their graves without
knowing that for one star that lighted them in their labours, there were
a hundred as good behind trying to do so! . . . I have a feeling for
this instrument not unlike the awe I should feel in the presence of a
great magician in whom I really believed. Its powers are so enormous,
and weird, and fantastical, that I should have a personal fear in being
with it alone. Music drew an angel down,