I had quite forgotten!" I exclaimed. "Oh, Lu, keep it, or
give it away, or something! I don't want it any longer."

"You're very vehement," she said, laughing now. "I am not afraid of your
gods. Shall I wear them?"

So the rest of the summer Lu twined them round her throat,--amulets of
sorcery, orbs of separation; but one night she brought them back to me.
That was last night. There they lie.

The next day, in the high golden noon, Rose came. I was on the lounge in
the alcove parlor, my hair half streaming out of Lu's net; but he didn't
mind. The light was toned and mellow, the air soft and cool. He came and
sat on the opposite side, so that he faced the wall table with its dish
of white, stiflingly sweet lilies, while I looked down the drawing-room.
He had brought a book, and by-and-by opened at the part commencing, "Do
not die, Phene." He read it through,--all that perfect, perfect scene.
From the moment when he said,

"I overlean
This length of hair and lustrous front,--they turn
Like an entire flower upward,"--

his voice low, sustained, clear,--till he reached the line,

"Look at the woman here with the new soul,"--

till he turned the leaf and murmured,

"Shall to produce form out of unshaped stuff
Be art,--and, further, to evoke a soul
From form be nothing? This new soul is mine!"--

till then, he never glanced up. Now, with a proud grace, he raised his
head,--not to look at me, but across me, at the lilies, to satiate
himself with their odorous snowiness. When he again pronounced words,
his voice was husky and vibrant; but what music dwelt in it and seemed
to prolong rather than break the silver silence, as he echoed,

"Some unsuspected isle in the far seas"!

How many read to descend to a prosaic life! how few to meet one as rich
and full beside them! The tone grew ever lower; he looked up slowly,
fastening his glance on mine.

"And you are ever by me while I gaze,--
Are in my arms, as now,--as now,--as now!"

he said. He swayed forward with those wild questioning eyes,--his breath
blew over my cheek; I was drawn,--I bent; the full passion of his soul
broke to being, wrapped me with a blinding light, a glowing kiss on
lingering lips, a clasp strong and tender as heaven. All my hair fell
down like a shining cloud and veiled us, the great rolling folds in wave
after wave of crisp splendor. I drew back from that long, silent kiss, I
gath