"But your imagination has depicted to you something grander than I am,"--then she assented quickly, turning round and nodding her head to him,--"some one who shall better respond to that spirit of poetry which is within you?" Again she nodded her head approvingly, as though to assure him that now he knew the whole truth. "Then, Ayala, I must strive to soar till I can approach your dreams. But, if you dare to desire things which are really grand, do not allow yourself to be mean at the same time. Do not let the sound of a name move you, or I shall not believe in your aspirations. Now shall I take you back to the house?" Back to the house they went, and there was not another word spoken between them. By those last words of his she had felt herself to be rebuked. If it were possible that he could ask her again whether that sound, Jonathan Stubbs, had anything to do with it, she would let him know now, by some signal, that she no longer found a barrier in the name. But there were other barriers,--barriers which he himself had not pretended to call vain. As to his ugliness, that he had confessed he could not remedy; calling on God to pity him because he was so. And as for that something grander which he had described, and for which her soul sighed, he had simply said that he would seek for it. She was sure that he would not find it. It was not to such as he that the something grander,--which was to be the peculiar attribute of the Angel of Light,--could be accorded. But he had owned that the something grander might exist. CHAPTER XXVI. "THE FINEST HERO THAT I EVER KNEW."