After all, who can deny that there is magic in a mirror, a weird atmosphere imprisoned, between the metal and the glass, borrowing the occult powers of the gulf of space, and returning to us our own wraith and apparition at any hour of the day or night when we smite it with a ray of light,--reaching with its searching power into the dark places where we have hidden ourselves, and seizing and projecting them in open sight? Who doubts that this sheeny panel on so many walls, with wary art slurring off its elusive gleam, could, at the one compelling word, paint again the reflections of all on which it silently dreams in its reticent heart,--the joy, the grief, the weeping face, the laughing lip, the lover's kiss, the tyrant's sneer, almost the crouched and bleeding soul on which that sneer descended, of which some wandering beam carried record? When we remember the violin, inwardly ridged with the vibrations of old tunes, old discords, who would wonder to find some charactery of light tracing its indelible script within the crystal substance? And here, if Vivia saw one other scene blaze out before her and vanish, why not believe, for fancy's sake, that it was as real a picture as the image of the dark and beautiful girl herself bending there with the carmine stain upon her cheek, the glowing, parted lips, the shining eyes, the shadowy hair? Late spring down on the Maryland farm: you know it by the intense blue through that quaint window draped with such a lushness of vines, such a glory of blossom. In at the open door, whose frame is arabesqued with hanging sprays of sweetbrier, with the pendent nest, with fluttering moth-wings sunshine-dusted, with crowds of bursting buds, pours the mellow sun in one great stream, pours from the peach-orchards the fragrant breeze laden with bird-song. A girl, standing aside, with clasped hands drooping before her, her gaze upon a shadow on the floor in the midst of that broad stream of light. Casting that shadow, under the lintel, a young man clad for travel. Since he left his Southern home, ruin has befallen it; he dares not ask one lapped in luxury to share such broken fortunes as his seem to-day, even though such stout shoulders, so valiant a heart, buffet them. If she loves, it is enough; they can wait; their treasure neither moth nor rust can corrupt; their jewel is imperishable. If she loves--He is looking in her eyes, holding to her his hands. Slowly the girl meets his glance. A long look, one long, silent look, infinitude in its assurance, its glow wrapping her, blue and smiling as heaven itself, reaching him like the evening star seen through tears,--a word, a touch, had profaned with a trait of earthliness so remote, so spiritual a betrothal. He goes, and still the upward-smiling girl sees the sunshine, hears the bird-song,--a boy dashes by the door and down the path to meet the last, close-lingering embrace of two waiting arms at the gate,--and then there is nothing but