the figure he designated.  Meanwhile the contention went on uninterruptedly.  Sleep was slow in asserting his power or his benefits.  Love recapitulated them; but only that he might assert his own above them.

“Suddenly he called upon me to decide, and to choose my patron.  Under the influence, first of the one, then of the other, I sprang from repose to rapture, I alighted from rapture on repose, and knew not which was sweetest.  Love was very angry with me, and declared he would cross me through the whole of my existence.  Whatever I might on other occasions have thought of his veracity, I now felt too surely that he would keep his word.

“At last, before the close of the altercation, the third Genius had advanced, and stood near us.  I cannot tell you how I knew him, but I knew him to be the Genius of Death.  Breathless as I was at beholding him, I soon became familiar with his features.  First they seemed only calm; presently they grew contemplative; and lastly beautiful; those of the Graces themselves are less regular, less harmonious, less composed.

“Love glanced at him unsteadily, with a countenance in which there was somewhat of anxiety, somewhat of disdain; and cried, ’Go away! go away! nothing that thou touchest, lives!’ ‘Say rather, child!’ replied the advancing form, and advancing grew loftier and statelier, ’say rather that nothing of beautiful or of glorious lives its own true life until my wing hath passed over it.’

“Love pouted, and rumpled and bent down with his forefinger the stiff short feathers on his arrow-head, but replied not.  Although he frowned worse than ever, and at me, I dreaded him less and less, and scarcely looked towards him.  The milder and calmer Genius, the third, in proportion as I took courage to contemplate him, regarded me with more and more complacency.  He held neither flower nor arrow as the others did, but throwing back the clusters of dark curls that overshadowed his countenance, he presented to me his hand, openly and benignly.  I shrank on looking at him so near, and yet I sighed to love him.  He smiled, not without an expression of pity, at perceiving my diffidence, my timidity; for I remembered how soft was the hand of Sleep, how warm and entrancing was Love’s.

“By degrees I became ashamed of my ingratitude, and turning my face away, I held out my arms, and I felt my neck within his; the coolness of freshest morning breathed around; the heavens seemed to open above me, while the beautiful cheek of my deliverer rested on my head.  I would now have looked for those others, but knowing my intention by my gesture, he said consolatorily, ’Sleep is on his way to the Earth, where many are calling him; but it is not to these he hastens, for every call only makes him fly further off.  Sedately and gravely as he looks, he is nearly as capricious and volatile as the more arrogant and ferocious one.’

    “‘And Love!’ said I, ’whither is he departed?  If not too late, I
    would propitiate and appease him.’