O blasphemy! ...  Sentenced joy?  Nay!—­rather re-created it, and invested it with divine certainties, beyond all temporal change or evanishment! ...  Yielding to a swift impulse, he threw himself on his knees, and with clasped hands, leaned his brows against the feet of the sculptured Christ.  There he rested in wordless peace,—­his whole soul entranced in a divine passion of faith, hope, and love ... there with the “Ardath flower” in his breast, he consecrated his life to the Highest Good,—­and there in absolute humility, and pure, child-like devotion, he crucified self forever!

PART III.—­POET AND ANGEL.

 “O Golden Hair! ...  O Gladness of an Hour
  Made flesh and blood!”

* * * * *

 “Who speaks of glory and the force of love
  And thou not near, my maiden-minded dove! 
  With all the coyness, all the beauty sheen
  Of thy rapt face?  A fearless virgin-queen,
  A queen of peace art thou,—­and on thy head
  The golden light of all thy hair is shed
  Most nimbus-like, and most suggestive too
  Of youthful saints enshrined and garlanded.”

* * * * *

 “Our thoughts are free,—­and mine have found at last
  Their apt solution; and from out the Past
  There seems to shine as ’twere a beacon-fire: 
  And all the land is lit with large desire
  Of lambent glory; all the quivering sea
  Is big with waves that wait the Morn’s decree
  As I, thy vassal, wait thy beckoning smile
  Athwart the splendors of my dreams of thee!”

          —­“A Lover’s Litanies.”—­Eric Mackay.

CHAPTER XXXI.

Fresh laurels.

It was a dismal March evening.  London lay swathed in a melancholy fog,—­a fog too dense to be more than temporarily disturbed even by the sudden gusts of the bitter east wind.  Rain fell steadily, sometimes changing to sleet, that drove in sharp showers on the slippery roads and pavements, bewildering the tired horses, and stirring up much irritation in the minds of those ill-fated foot-passengers whom business, certainly not pleasure, forced to encounter the inconveniences of the weather.  Against one house in particular—­an old-fashioned, irregular building situated in a somewhat out-of-the-way but picturesque part of Kensington—­the cold, wet blast blew with specially keen ferocity, as though it were angered by the sounds within,—­sounds that in truth rather resembled its own cross groaning.  Curious short grunts and plaintive cries, interspersed with an occasional pathetic long-drawn whine, suggested dimly the idea that somebody was playing, or trying to play, on a refractory stringed instrument, the well-worn composition known as Raff’s “Cavatina.”  And, in fact, had the vexed wind been able to break through the wall and embody itself into a substantial