Angelica must have fallen asleep the moment she got into bed that night,
and just as instantly she began to dream. She had never hitherto felt a
throb of passion. She had given the best love of her life to her brother,
and had made no personal application of anything she had heard, or seen,
or read of lovers, so that the possibility of ever having one of her own
had never cost her a serious thought. But the excitement of that day and
the occupations had so wrought upon her imagination that when she slept
she dreamt, and in her dream she saw a semblance, the semblance of a man,
a changing semblance, the features of which she could not discern,
although she tried with frenzied effort, because she knew that when she
saw him fully face to face he would be hers. They were not in this world,
nor in the next. They were not eyen in the universe. They were simply each
the centre of a great light which formed a sphere about them, and
separated them from one another; and heaven and hell, and earth and sky,
and night and day, and life and death were, all added to the glory of
those spheres of light. And she knew _how_; but there is no word of
human speech to express it. She lay on light, she stood on light, she sat
on light, she swam in light; and wallowed, and walked, and ran, and
leaped, and soared, rolling along in her own sphere until the monotony
made her giddy; and all her endeavour was to reach her lover, not for
himself so much as because she knew that if their two lights could be
added in equal parts to each other and mingled into one, their combined
effulgence would make a pathway to heaven. But try as she would she could
not attain her object, and finally she became so exhausted by the struggle
that she was obliged to desist. The moment she did so, however, the other
sphere tamed of its own accord, and rolled up to her. "Dear me!" said
Angelica. "How easily things are done when the right time comes!" The
semblance now took shape, and kissed her. "How nice!" thought Angelica,
returning the kiss. "This is love. Love is life. I am his. He is mine.
Most of all, he is _mine!_" "No, we can't allow that!" said a chorus
of men from the earth. "You're beginning to know too much. You'll want to
be paid for your labour next just as well as we are, and that is
_unwomanly!_" But Angelica only laughed and kissed her lover. "Talk
does no good," she said; "this is the one thing the great man-boy-booby
understands at present!" So she kissed him again, and every time she
kissed him, he changed. He was Samson, Abraham, Lot, Antony, Caesar, Pan,
Achilles, Hercules, Jove; he was Lancelot and Arthur, Percival, Galahad
and Gawaine. He was Henry VIII., Richelieu, Robespierre, Luther, and
several Popes. He was David the Psalmist, beloved of the man-god of the
Hebrews. He was golden-haired Absalom, and St. Paul in his unregenerate
days. But he never was Solomon. She saw hundreds of women dividing Solomon
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