And Arthur, let those who disbelieve in love at first sight laugh if they will, sat down to think, trembling in every limb, utterly shaken by the inrush of a new and strong emotion.  He had not come to the age of twenty-four without some experience of the other sex, but never before had he known any such sensation as that which now overpowered him, never before had he fully realized what solitude meant as he did now that she had left him.  In youth, when love does come, he comes as a strong man armed.

And so, steady and overwhelming all resistance, the full tide of a pure passion poured itself into his heart.  There was no pretence or make-believe about it; the bold that sped from Angela’s grey eyes had gone straight home, and would remain an “ever-fixed mark,” so long as life itself should last.

For only once in a lifetime does a man succumb after this fashion.  To many, indeed, no such fortune—­call it good or ill—­will ever come, since the majority of men flirt or marry, indulge in “platonic friendships,” or in a consistent course of admiration of their neighbours’ wives, as fate or fancy leads them, and wear their time away without ever having known the meaning of such love as this.  There is no fixed rule about it; the most unlikely, even the more sordid and contemptible of mankind, are liable to become the subjects of an enduring passion; only then it raises them; for though strong affection, especially, if unrequited, sometimes wears and enervates the mind, its influence is, in the main, undoubtedly ennobling.  But, though such affection is bounded by no rule, it is curious to observe how generally true are the old sayings which declare that a man’s thoughts return to his first real love, as naturally and unconsciously as the needle, that has for a while been drawn aside by some overmastering influence, returns to its magnetic pole.  The needle has wavered, but it has never shaken off its allegiance; that would be against nature, and is therefore impossible; and so it is with the heart.  It is the eves that he loved as a lad which he sees through the gathering darkness of his death-bed; it is a chance but that he will always adore the star which first came to share his loneliness in this shadowed world above all the shining multitudes in heaven.

And, though it is not every watcher who will find it, early or late, that star may rise for him, as it did for Arthur now.  A man may meet a face which it is quite beyond his power to forget, and be touched of lips that print their kiss upon his very heart.  Yes, the star may rise, to pursue its course, perhaps beyond the ken of his horizon, or only to set again before he has learnt to understand its beauty—­ rarely, very rarely, to shed its perfect light upon him for all his time of watching.  The star may rise and set; the sweet lips whose touch still thrills him after so many years may lie to-day

“Beyond the graveyard’s barren wall,”

or, worse still, have since been sold to some richer owner.  But if once it has risen, if once those lips have met, the memory must remain; the Soul knows no forgetfulness, and, the little thread of life spun out, will it not claim its own?  For the compact that it has sealed is holy among holy things; that love which it has given is of its own nature, and not of the body alone—­it is inscrutable as death, and everlasting as the heavens.