Love is the master-key, he went on thinking, love is the master-key that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear.  How terrible is the one fact of beauty!—­not only the historic wonder of beauty, that “burnt the topless towers of Ilium” for the smile of Helen, and fired the palaces of Babylon by the hand of Thais, but the beauty which springs up in all times and places, and carries a torch and wears a serpent for a wreath as truly as any of the Eumenides.  Paint Beauty with her foot upon a skull and a dragon coiled around her.

The doctor smiled at his own imposing classical allusions and pictorial imagery.  Drifting along from thought to thought, he reflected on the probable consequences of the general knowledge of Maurice Kirkwood’s story, if it came before the public.

What a piece of work it would make among the lively youths of the village, to be sure!  What scoffing, what ridicule, what embellishments, what fables, would follow in the trail of the story!  If the Interviewer got hold of it, how “The People’s Perennial and Household Inquisitor” would blaze with capitals in its next issue!  The young fellows’ of the place would be disposed to make fun of the whole matter.  The young girls-the doctor hardly dared to think what would happen when the story got about among them.  “The Sachem” of the solitary canoe, the bold horseman, the handsome hermit,—­handsome so far as the glimpses they had got of him went,—­must needs be an object of tender interest among them, now that he was ailing, suffering, in danger of his life, away from friends,—­poor fellow!  Little tokens of their regard had reached his sick-chamber; bunches of flowers with dainty little notes, some of them pinkish, some three-cornered, some of them with brief messages, others “criss-crossed,” were growing more frequent as it was understood that the patient was likely to be convalescent before many days had passed.  If it should come to be understood that there was a deadly obstacle to their coming into any personal relations with him, the doctor had his doubts whether there were not those who would subject him to the risk; for there were coquettes in the village,—­strangers, visitors, let us hope,—­who would sacrifice anything or anybody to their vanity and love of conquest.

XXI

An intimate conversation.

The illness from which Maurice had suffered left him in a state of profound prostration.  The doctor, who remembered the extreme danger of any overexertion in such cases, hardly allowed him to lift his head from the pillow.  But his mind was gradually recovering its balance, and he was able to hold some conversation with those about him.  His faithful Paolo had grown so thin in waiting upon him and watching with him that the village children had to take a second look at his face when they passed him to make sure that it was indeed their old friend and no other.  But as his master advanced towards convalescence and the doctor assured him that he was going in all probability to get well, Paolo’s face began to recover something of its old look and expression, and once more his pockets filled themselves with comfits for his little circle of worshipping three and four year old followers.