mprehended,--grant that in this accursed instrument of
antique superstition there be some real powers--chemical, magnetic, no
matter what-by which the imagination can be aroused, inflamed, deluded,
so that it shapes the things I have seen, speaks in the tones I have
heard,--grant this, shall I keep ever ready, at the caprice of will, a
constant tempter to steal away my reason and fool my senses? Or if,
on the other hand, I force my sense to admit what all sober men must
reject; if I unschool myself to believe that in what I have just
experienced there is no mental illusion; that sorcery is a fact, and a
demon world has gates which open to a key that a mortal can forge,--who
but a saint would not shrink from the practice of powers by which each
passing thought of ill might find in a fiend its abettor? In either
case--in any case--while I keep this direful relic of obsolete arts, I
am haunted,--cheated out of my senses, unfitted for the uses of life.
If, as my ear or my fancy informs me, grief--human grief--is about to
befall me, shall I, in the sting of impatient sorrow, have recourse to
an aid which, the same voice declares, will reduce me to a tool and
a slave,--tool and slave to a being I dread as a foe? Out on these
nightmares! and away with the thing that bewitches the brain to conceive
them!"

I rose; I took up the wand, holding it so that its hollow should not
rest on the palm of the hand. I stole from the house by the back way,
in order to avoid Lilian, whose voice I still heard, singing low, on
the lawn in front. I came to a creek, to the bank of which a boat
was moored, undid its chain, rowed on to a deep part of the lake, and
dropped the wand into its waves. It sank at once; scarcely a ripple
furrowed the surface, not a bubble arose from the deep. And, as the boat
glided on, the star mirrored itself on the spot where the placid waters
had closed over the tempter to evil.

Light at heart, I sprang again on the shore, and hastening to Lilian,
where she stood on the silvered, shining sward, clasped her to my
breast.

"Spirit of my life!" I murmured, "no enchantments for me but thine!
Thine are the spells by which creation is beautified, and, in that
beauty, hallowed. What though we can see not into the measureless future
from the verge of the moment; what though sorrow may smite us while we
are dreaming of bliss, let the future not rob me of thee, and a balm
will be found for each wound! Love me ever as now, o