With Narcissus this evolution had taken place early: it was very long ago--he felt old even then to think of it--since Hesperus had sung like a nightingale above his first kiss, and his memory counted many trophies of lordship. But, surely, this last was of all the starriest; perhaps, indeed, so wonderful was it, it might prove the very love which would bring back again the dream that had seemed lost for ever with the passing of that mythical first maid so long ago, a love in which worship should be all once more, and godship none at all. But is not such a question all too certainly its own answer? Nay, Narcissus, if indeed you find that wonder-maid again, you will not question so; you will forget to watch that graceful shadow in the moonlight; you will but ask to sit by her silent, as of old, to follow her to the end of the world. Ah me! 'How many queens have ruled and passed Since first we met; How thick and fast The letters used to come at first, How thin at last; Then ceased, and winter for a space! Until another hand Brought spring into the land, And went the seasons' pace.' That Miller's Daughter, although 'so dear, so dear,' why, of course, she was not that maid: but again the silver halo has grown about her; again Narcissus asks himself, 'Did she live, or did I dream?'; again she comes to him at whiles, wafted on that strange incense, and clothed about in that mystical lustre of pearl. Doubtless, she lives in that fabled country still: but Narcissus has grown sadly wise since then, and he goes on pilgrimage no more. CHAPTER V AN IDYLL OF ALICE SUNSHINE, WHICH REALLY BELONGS TO THE LAST CHAPTER If the Reader has heard enough of the amourettes of the young gentleman upon whose memoirs I am engaged, let him skip this chapter and pass to the graver chapters beyond. My one aim is the Reader's pleasure, and I carry my solicitude so far that if he finds his happiness to lie outside these pages altogether, has no choice among these various chapters, but prefers none to any, I am quite content. Such a spirit of self-abnegation, the Reader must admit, is true love. Perhaps it was an early unconscious birth-impulse of the true love some day to be born in his heart, that caused Narcissus to make a confession to his Miller's Daughter, on one of their pretty decorative evenings, when they sat together at the fireside, while the scent of the climbing roses, and the light of the climbing moon, came in at the window. The immediate effect of the confession was--no wonder--to draw tears. And how beautiful she looked in tears! Who would dive for pearls when the pearl-fisheries of a woman's eyes are his to rifle? Beautiful, beautiful tears, flow on--no dull, leaden rain, no mere monotonous deluge, but a living, singing fountain, crowned with such rainbows as hang roses and stars in the fine mist of samite waterfalls, irradiated by gleaming shafts of lovely anger and scorn.