broken and shamed as it was, he loved it still, though he knew that he could never lay it in his breast, never wear it through life as his glory and pride; and therefore, though it nearly cleft his heart in twain to leave it, he cast it from him, and went his way alone.
"Not long afterwards, when he was in the very midst of his hard, fierce struggle to forget, he came by chance upon it, and though he knew its worthlessness, he longed after its beauty with a deep and passionate longing, that nearly overcame him; and after all, the speckled stains were faint and invisible to all eyes save his own; but his standard of purity was a high one, else had he not so long sought the one who should come up to it; and a second time he conquered this madness, and went his way. Years after, when he was no longer seeking either good or evil, when his old search after anything perfect seemed faint and far away, he chanced upon a little flower that grew up sweet, and sturdy, and honest, in its quiet corner, past which the world never ran. It was not so gorgeous and stately as the tall white flower, but it had a fair, winsome face, and its clean, fresh sweetness came more gratefully to the weary, jaded man, than had ever the voluptuous beauty of the other. And though his love of the first had long faded away, this fresher, healthier love took and cast out the last fragments of a lingering, haunting memory; and his heart was as empty of all feeling for it, as though he had never loved and regretted so bitterly. And so—he was mad, you will say, for had not his experience been disastrous enough?—he longed for this little flower with a keen intensity that he had never known for the other." He pauses, and down-dropping into the silence come the exquisite notes of a bird, who seems to be singing miles above us, oh, so sweetly! in at God's gate.
"Was he quite sure this time?" I ask, watching a little snowy sail that is scudding across the bit of jasper that shines through
