So Jason gathered his mates—­a reckless lot they were, too—­and, having laden his barque and swung into the stream, his men said their final adieux, receiving quantities of pincushions and bookmarks, so indispensable to Argonauts, as testimonials of eternal fidelity from the maids of Dreamland.

Jason strode to the cottage and kissed the hand of Maud as if it were the hand of a princess; after which, with much embarrassment, he plucked a rose from her garden, while a pang pierced his heart till it ached again, and a thorn probed his finger till a drop of blood fell upon a myrtle leaf; which leaf Maud coveted, and keeps to this day—­hugged to her in her grave-clothes.

It is of course best that this life should not be perfect, for the life to come might suffer by comparison; yet it is one of the cruelest decrees of Nature—­if Nature has really decreed what seems so wholly against her—­that a woman’s heart must bide its time and be silent in the presence of its natural mate while every attribute of her being implores his recognition; and that the truest men are too honorable or too proud to yield themselves, having no offering but their honest love to lay at the feet of their mistresses.  If it were not so, the princess would not have mourned in her garden for her flown mate, and there would have been much happiness on short notice.

Driven forth by the propitious winds, the barque fled from the shore, while Maud, seated among her roses, with weeping and wringing of hands, poured out upon the winds the burden of her love.

Why didn’t Jason catch a syllable of that fervent prayer, reef, and come home to her?  Then I need not have written this history, and all would have been well in Dreamland.  But he didn’t.  He heard nothing but the sibilant waters as they rushed under his keel:  he thought of nothing but the rose that was withering in the secret locker of his cabin, and of the wound in his heart that was gaping and as fresh as ever.  So the night-winds hurried him onward, and the darkness absorbed the outlines of the dear Dreamland coast.

Maud watched the barque while it lessened and lessened in the distance, and the clouds blew over her, and it grew chilly and damp in the rose-garden—­as chilly and damp as though it were not the abode of a princess who was beloved of the noblest of men.  She watched the sail till it faded suddenly beyond the headland, and between it and her loomed the dark towers of the convent.  Out on that troubled sea, seeking the golden fleece in some remote kingdom, tossed on the treacherous waves for her sake, in her white and radiant dreams she beheld Jason.  Yet ever between him and her, hiding the lessening barque from the slope of the rose-garden, loomed the dark towers of the convent.

II.