The woman lost the remnant of her temper and flashed up on the instant. “Gabriel, I won’t be jeered at like this. You are an utter brute. Stay here and grub in your books like a hermit. I am not going to be a martyr to your vanity. I’m sick of your sour face. Thank Heaven, I can find amiability outside my own home. I shall take a holiday.” The man stood up and still stared apathetically at the fire. His shoulders drooped and he looked sullenly dejected. “Try a change, dear, by all means,” he said; “you seem to need it. I am a bit of a bookworm, I know. You must make allowance for me. I suppose you don’t want such a dull dog to travel with you.” “Thanks. I can enjoy myself better alone.” “Very good.” “There is no need for me to come between you and your genius. No. I am not so vain as to desire that.” A quarter of an hour later Gabriel had drawn back the curtains and thrown open the French window that looked out upon the lawns. Snow sparkled at his feet. The trees rose dark and solemn from the immaculate plain of winter; the stars were frost-brilliant in the heavens. Near stood a tall cypress with its shelving ledges gleaming white with snow. The keen breath of the night wrapped the man in a clear and spiritual atmosphere. Snow upon the trees and on the hills! Snow, pure, passionless, and silent, flickered over by the faint wisdom of the stars! All the sweat and turmoil of the world seemed congealed into soundless sleep. The blood of the earth lay frozen in its great passionate heart. Love, hardened into ice, stood a purple pool of lifeless wine. A million centuries might have elapsed till the sun had waned into a half-molten sphere; and the earth, cold and immaculate at last, rushed icy-bosomed through perpetual night. A dead planet, a ghost world, a moon staring spectre-like on the blood-red passions of living stars! A dead planet, treading the universal cycle, cold, sunless, and without sin! The million atomic struggles tombed; the ant-heap of humanity petrified in the past! What, then, are the woes of man, when God’s eyes have watched the death agony of a thousand worlds! And yet this microcosm outvapors the universe. His passions aspire to stir the faintest ripples of the most infinite ether. Framed in the likeness of God, his sphere is limitless, his future unfathomed. The old mythologies raised him amid the stars. Mayhap in ages to come he is transmogrified into a radiant being moving amid the vapors of a more stupendous sun.