“Yet may I look with heart unshook
On blow brought home or missed—­
Yet may I hear with equal ear
The clarions down the List;
Yet set my lance above mischance
And ride the barriere—­
Oh, hit or miss, how little ’tis,
My Lady is not there!”

A verse, in this connection, which may be a perversion of Mr. Kipling’s meaning, but not so far from it, after all.  And yet, would the eagle attempt the great flights if contentment were on the plain?  Find the mainspring of achievement, and you hold in your hand the secret of the world’s mechanism.  Some aver that it is woman.

Do the gods ever confer the rarest of gifts upon him to whom they have given pinions?  Do they mate him, ever, with another who soars as high as he, who circles higher that he may circle higher still?  Who can answer?  Must those who soar be condemned to eternal loneliness, and was it a longing they did not comprehend which bade them stretch their wings toward the sun?  Who can say?

Alas, we cannot write of the future of Austen and Victoria Vane!  We can only surmise, and hope, and pray,—­yes, and believe.  Romance walks with parted lips and head raised to the sky; and let us follow her, because thereby our eyes are raised with hers.  We must believe, or perish.

Postscripts are not fashionable.  The satiated theatre goer leaves before the end of the play, and has worked out the problem for himself long before the end of the last act.  Sentiment is not supposed to exist in the orchestra seats.  But above (in many senses) is the gallery, from whence an excited voice cries out when the sleeper returns to life, “It’s Rip Van Winkle!” The gallery, where are the human passions which make this world our world; the gallery, played upon by anger, vengeance, derision, triumph, hate, and love; the gallery, which lingers and applauds long after the fifth curtain, and then goes reluctantly home—­to dream.  And he who scorns the gallery is no artist, for there lives the soul of art.  We raise our eyes to it, and to it we dedicate this our play;—­and for it we lift the curtain once more after those in the orchestra have departed.

It is obviously impossible, in a few words, to depict the excitement in Ripton, in Leith, in the State at large, when it became known that the daughter of Mr. Flint was to marry Austen Vane,—­a fitting if unexpected climax to a drama.  How would Mr. Flint take it?  Mr. Flint, it may be said, took it philosophically; and when Austen went up to see him upon this matter, he shook hands with his future son-in-law,—­and they agreed to disagree.  And beyond this it is safe to say that Mr. Flint was relieved; for in his secret soul he had for many years entertained a dread that Victoria might marry a foreigner.  He had this consolation at any rate.

His wife denied herself for a day to her most intimate friends,—­for it was she who had entertained visions of a title; and it was characteristic of the Rose of Sharon that she knew nothing of the Vanes beyond the name.  The discovery that the Austens were the oldest family in the State was in the nature of a balm; and henceforth, in speaking of Austen, she never failed to mention the fact that his great-grandfather was Minister to Spain in the ’30’s,—­a period when her own was engaged in a far different calling.