"Can you say those words and not like it? Don't it bring to you a magnificent picture of the pristine world,--great seas and other skies,--a world of accentuated crises, that sloughed off age after age, and rose fresher from each plunge? Don't you see, or long to see, that mysterious magic tree out of whose pores oozed this fine solidified sunshine? What leaf did it have? what blossom? what great wind shivered its branches? Was it a giant on a lonely coast, or thick low growth blistered in ravines and dells? That's the witchery of amber,--that it _has_ no cause,--that all the world grew to produce it,--may-be died and gave no other sign,--that its tree, which must have been beautiful, dropped all its fruits; and how bursting with juice must they have been"---- "Unfortunately, coniferous." "Be quiet. Stripped itself of all its lush luxuriance, and left for a vestige only this little fester of its gashes." "No, again," he once more interrupted. "I have seen remnants of the wood and bark in a museum." "Or has it hidden and compressed all its secret here?" I continued, obliviously. "What if in some piece of amber an accidental seed were sealed, we found, and planted, and brought back the lost aeons? What a glorious world that must have been, where even the gum was so precious!" "In a picture, yes. Necessary for this. But, my dear Miss Willoughby, you convince me that the Amber Witch founded your family," he said, having listened with an amused face. "Loveliest amber that ever the sorrowing sea-birds have wept," he hummed. "There! isn't that kind of stuff enough to make a man detest it?" "Yes." "And you are quite as bad in another way." "Oh!" "Just because, when we hold it in our hands, we hold also that furious epoch where rioted all monsters and poisons,--where death fecundated and life destroyed,--where superabundance demanded such existences, no souls, but fiercest animal fire;--just for that I hate it." "Why, then, is it fitted for me?" He laughed again, but replied,--"The hues harmonize,--the substances; you both are accidents; it suits your beauty." So, then, it seemed I had beauty, after all. "You mean that it harmonizes with me, because I am a symbol of its period. If there had been women then, they would have been like me,--a great creature without a soul, a"---- "Pray, don't finish the sentence. I can imagine that there is something rich and voluptuous and sating about amber, its color, and its lustre, and its scent; but for others, not for me. Yea, you have beauty, after all," turning suddenly, and withering me with his eye,--"beauty, after all, as you didn't _say_ just now.--Mr. Willoughby is in the garden. I must go before he comes in, or he'll make me stay. There are some to whom you can't say, No."