As he considered the future, in the man’s face showed only puzzled lassitude; and you saw therein a quaint resemblance to Maugis d’Aigremont. “I find my country an inadequate place in which to live,” says Horvendile. “Oh, many persons live there happily enough! or, at worst, they seem to find the prizes and the applause of my country worth striving for whole-heartedly. But there is that in some of us which gets no exercise there; and we struggle blindly, with impotent yearning, to gain outlet for great powers which we know that we possess, even though we do not know their names. And so, we dreamers wander at adventure to Storisende—oh, and into more perilous realms sometimes!—in search of a life that will find employment for every faculty we have. For life in my country does not engross us utterly. We dreamers waste there at loose ends, waste futilely. All which we can ever see and hear and touch there, we dreamers dimly know, is at best but a portion of the truth, and is possibly not true at all. Oh, yes! it may be that we are not sane; could we be sure of that, it would be a comfort. But, as it is, we dreamers only know that life in my country does not content us, and never can content us. So we struggle, for a tiny dear-bought while, into other and fairer-seeming lands in search of—we know not what! And, after a little”—he relinquished the maiden’s hands, spread out his own hands, shrugging—“after a little, we must go back into my country and live there as best we may.” A whimsical wise smile now visited Ettarre’s lips. Her hands went to her breast, and presently one half the broken sigil of Scoteia lay in Horvendile’s hand. “You will not always abide in your own country, Horvendile. Some day you will return to us at Storisende. The sign of the Dark Goddess will prove your safe-conduct then if Guiron and I be yet alive.” Horvendile raised to his mouth the talisman warmed by contact with her sweet flesh. “It may be you will not live for a great while,” he says; “but that will befall through no lack of loving pains on your creator’s part.” Then Horvendile left them. In the dark passage-way he paused, looking back at Guiron and Ettarre for a heart-beat. Guiron and Ettarre had already forgotten his existence. Hand-in-hand they stood in the bright room, young, beautiful and glad. Silently their lips met. Horvendile closed the door, and so left Storisende forever. Without he came into a lonely quiet-colored world already expectant of dawn’s occupancy. Already the tree-trunks eastward showed like the black bars of a grate. Thus he walked in twilight, carrying half the sigil of Scoteia.... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ _Book Second_ ══════════════════════ “Whate’er she be— That inaccessible She That doth command my heart and me: