He was looking into the air much as he had been used to do before his recovery of speech, when in mellifluous tones, scarcely audible, he had talked on in a language quite unknown as the listening Ethel upbore his highest intelligence, aiding him as he tried to tell what Petrarch had sought and at last had found in his “VITA SOLITARIA.” “As it was, after Laura’s translation to the unseen world his love for her spiritualized into a worship for that _love-full-of wisdom_ which our Lord promised to send to lead us into all truth, and which he called ‘the Comforter,’ which was to dwell in disciples of holiness. “Well would it be for us if we could first, chastely love all womanhood as sisters; and then as mothers, noble and dignified, which is far from being cold and proud. I am sure woman could (if we cleared her way respectfully) put us at our ease with her on her own supernal plane, without descending to us from it. If woman remained on her lawful heights she would leave us men always aspiring toward some veiled and virgin loveliness which would quicken each dulled spirit, and set it free from the chains that bind _thought_ to the person, instead of to the _spiritual-principle_ toward which, in reality, man’s interior nature aspires. “Of course all this is only saying that woman is a help, able to meet her brother’s painful needs at this _fin de siècle_. And that she is awfully benevolent to do it, when she has a right to better enjoyments than that of the misery of birthing and burying babies—many of whom are not fit to be born—and to better enjoyment than this taking care of men, who are not fair enough to secure to _her_ those advantages which would enable her to act freely, according to the teachings of supernal light. “I have always been sure,” added Reginald, “that at a certain stage in man’s development the best thing a wisely-helpful-woman can do for a man, is to set him absolutely free from love to _her_. That, chained to _her no more_, she can then, with kind demeanor and dear reserve, explain him to himself by revealing to him the mental-mystery of that finished femininity, which is type and potency of the ‘sleeping beauty’ within his own being,—a sleeping beauty yet to be electrified into activity by man’s strenuous englobement of his brain substance. Thus, a fair face will conduct men by a fairer way to his one means of self-releasement from loving an extraneous self, and will bring him to the treasured bliss which will ne’er abandon the man who attains it! Thus man—like woman—will become wholly sexed: neither male nor female, but-both; being self-whole, self-harmonized, like the lilies of the Resurrection.” Robert had grasped Reginald’s hand. A silence had settled upon them. Then Robert, with smouldering rage, broke forth relative to he—knew—what—