the impersonation of all that was lovely and excellent; his presence made my sense of happiness complete; his voice touched my ears as the blending of all rich harmonies.  But there fell upon him a shadow; there came hard discords in the music which had entranced my soul; the fine gold was dimmed.  Then came that period of mad strife, of blind antagonism, in which we hurt each other by rough contact.  Finally, we were driven far asunder, and, instead of revolving together around a common centre, each has moved in a separate orbit.  For years that dark period of pain has held the former period of brightness in eclipse; but of late gleams from that better time have made their way down to the present.  Gradually the shadows are giving away.  The first state is coming to be felt more and more as the true state—­as that in best agreement with what we are in relation to each other.  It was the evil in us that met in such fatal antagonism—­not the good; it was something that we must put off if we would rise from natural and selfish life into spiritual and heavenly life.  It was our selfishness and passion that drove us asunder.  Thus it is, dear Rose, that my thoughts have been wandering about in the maze of life that entangles me.  In my isolation I have time enough for mental inversion—­for self-exploration—­for idle fancies, if you will.  And so I have lifted the veil for you; uncovered my inner life; taken you into the sanctuary over whose threshold no foot but my own had ever passed.”

There was too much in all this for Mrs. Everet to venture upon any reply that involved suggestion or advice.  It was from a desire to look deeper into the heart of her friend that she had spoken of her meeting with Mr. Emerson.  The glance she obtained revealed far more than her imagination had ever reached.

CHAPTER XXVI.

LOVE NEVER DIES.

THE brief meeting with Mrs. Everet had stirred the memory of old times in the heart of Mr. Emerson.  With a vividness unknown for years, Ivy Cliff and the sweetness of many life-passages there came back to him, and set heart-pulses that he had deemed stilled for ever beating in tumultuous waves.  When the business of the day was over he sat down in the silence of his chamber and turned his eyes inward.  He pushed aside intervening year after year, until the long-ago past was, to his consciousness, almost as real as the living present.  What he saw moved him deeply.  He grew restless, then showed disturbance of manner.  There was an effort to turn away from the haunting fascination of this long-buried, but now exhumed period; but the dust and scoria were removed, and it lifted, like another Pompeii, its desolate walls and silent chambers in the clear noon-rays of the present.

After a long but fruitless effort to bury the past again, to let the years close over it as the waves close over a treasure-laden ship, Mr. Emerson gave himself up to its thronging memories and let them bear him whither they would.