He felt the presence of Clotilde behind the word; but in truth the delicate sensations breeding these half-thoughts of his, as he lay between sleeping and waking, shrank from conjuring up the face of the woman who had wounded them, and a certain instinct to preserve and be sure of his present breathing-space of luxurious tranquillity kept her veiled.  Soon he would see her as his wife, and then she would be she, unveiled ravishingly, the only she, the only wife!  He knew the cloud he clasped for Clotilde enough to be at pains to shun a possible prospect of his execrating it.  Oh, the only she, the only wife! the wild man’s reclaimer! the sweet abundant valley and channel of his river of existence henceforward!  Doubting her in the slightest was doubting her human.  It is the brain, the satanic brain which will ever be pressing to cast its shadows:  the heart is clearer and truer.

He multiplied images, projected visions, nestled in his throbs to drug and dance his brain.  He snatched at the beauty of a day that outrolled the whole Alpine hand-in-hand of radiant heaven-climbers for an assurance of predestined celestial beneficence; and again, shadowily thoughtful of the littleness of the thing he exalted and claimed, he staked his reason on the positive blessing to come to him before nightfall, telling himself calmly that he did so because there would be madness in expecting it otherwise:  he asked for so little!  Since he asked for so little, to suppose that it would not be granted was irrational.  None but a very coward could hesitate to stake his all on the issue.

Singularly small indeed the other aims in life appeared by comparison with this one, but his intellect, in the act of pleading excuses for his impatience, distinguished why it should be so.  The crust, which is not much, is everything to the starving beggar; and he was eager for the crust that he might become sound and whole again, able to give their just proportion to things, as at present he acknowledged himself hardly able to do.  He could not pursue two thoughts on a political question, or grasp the idea of a salutary energy in the hosts animated by his leadership.  There would have to be an end of it speedily, else men might name him worthless dog!

Morning swam on the lake in her beautiful nakedness, a wedding of white and blue, of purest white and bluest blue.  Alvan crossed the island bridges when the sun had sprung on his shivering fair prey, to make the young fresh Morning rosy, and was glittering along the smooth lake-waters.  Workmen only were abroad, and Alvan was glad to be out with them to feel with them as one of them.  Close beside him the vivid genius of the preceding century, whose love of workmen was a salt of heaven in his human corruptness, looked down on the lake in marble.  Alvan cherished a worship of him as of one that had first thrilled him with the feeling of our common humanity, with the tenderness for the poor, with the knowledge of our