“Over the long wastes of water. It shines there so mistily,” he answered; “it blossoms so full of faint entreating faces. Is it the way home, I wonder--the path to that real unknown God, the God of utter love, to whom, shrinking from the Jehovah of Israel, we are for ever blindly stretching out our arms--the God to whom we turn, as the poor world-broken turns from the high-altar to the pitiful Mother, the lovely and grief-hushing in some wonderful, inexplicable way? So it seems to me, my Isabel--the long far lands of home--the shores of unutterable consolation. Shall we go home together some day?” She answered like Ruth, a very passion of emotion in her voice. “Sweet love,” he said, deeply moved; “so dear and strange the North seems to me--a symbol and a mystery. And to reach it at last, just a sleep and a returning. You did not know I was of northern blood?” “No, I did not know.” “But I am, Isabel. When was it--when your great-great-great-great-grandfather was on the Spanish throne, and his fleet sailed northward to destroy the heretic. Do you know your house’s history, child--the magnificence and the shame of it? How those little islands, those little hazy islands, planted like green ramparts on the threshold of the unknown, called to their aid the winds and lightnings, and smote the invader, in his presumption, from their seas. And how of that vast flotilla few escaped; and not one but was disabled; while many beat round the northern limits, only to be dashed to pieces on the rocks and shoals of the western islands. And of those poor souls who found a landing there, hundreds were slain, and but a handful, sheltered of passion and pity, survived--pity that gave protection, passion that gave me my ancestors and my name. The sun and the mist meet in my blood, Isabel--the passion and the mystery of life. And sometimes one prevails, and I am human; and sometimes the other, and I am a seer or a lunatic.” She listened, wondering a little; and then said she, “My strange love; let me look in your eyes.” Smiling and unmoving he faced her; and she stood gazing in silence. Presently she said: “I have always wondered; and now I know. They are brown; and yet they are blue. It is the sea gleaming through their shadows.” “It is the North,” he answered--“whither we are flying some day--you and I together, dear love. Listen!” He took his lute, and sang softly to her: “Where the sea and sky meet, Kissing far away, O, come, love! O, come, love, Daring salt and spray! There join earth and heaven, Each fulfilled in bliss. O, northward, love, come northward, Where the strange thing is! “Where the storm-bow’s shining Standeth where God stood, O, set thy little foot, love, Safe from wreck and flood! Dim and far in the raining Lights gleam mystical. O, northward, love, come northward, Where strange things befall!” CHAPTER XIII. TOKENS