But the garden remained—that home beloved, and a new and dearer shape wandered lonely by the river bank gazing steadfastly upward to the bright billows of the silver peaks, remote and pure as they, and she led by the hand a child. And surely he whom lust cannot conquer may unashamed kneel at the feet of love pure as the very sources of light! And his heart said “My Princess!” and almost ceased to beat, so strange, so sweet, that living bleeding memory;—and whether it was the voice of his own soul or hers he could not know,—but she seemed to shape the one word, “Beloved”, and so withdrawing her gaze from the mountains, looked at him, all love, all entreaty in those sunken eyes—beauty faded by grief, but stronger a thousandfold to plead with him, and mutely she showed the child, and so stood, waiting to know his sentence whether she must live or die. And round her like mourning shadows swept the image of his father, aged by grief and visibly stooping under the heavy burden; the gentle queen, sister of his mother, who had fed him from her own bosom, wrung her hands beside him and all the faithful friends and servants who had guarded his youth; and together they were the very voice of home, and his own heart asked itself, “Have I the right to hurt these faithful ones! But what are they and myriads like them to her—my wife, my son!” And whether he would have moved to reach her, I cannot tell, but suddenly, past all knowledge, he certainly knew that never could that great lady his wife present herself as an obstacle and a temptation, and that this was but a shift and a shape-changer not to be trusted, dangerous and cunning like the first, and steadfastly he gazed past her, his face set and calm as doom, and shrieking horribly she fled. And then, thick as rain in _Wasa_, fell delirious dreams and delusions, and there came about him frightful things, misshapen, goblin, the very spume and smoke of the pit, and there was a noise in the air, that stupified the brain, of shrieks and shouts and groans and terrible cries and far off wailings and it appeared as though great spirits fought in the air about him with the black armies of the Wicked One. And upon the night the Tempter flung a vast phantasmagoria of the power and splendour awaiting the Prince if he would but stoop to grasp them. King of the earth, throned and crowned, he saw himself. And flames shot about the pictures and huge confusions, and an ocean of terrors broke against him, and the billows threatened to overwhelm him, and he knew that did he relax but for the instant that a man blinks his eye, all were lost. But he sat motionless his face fixed and calm as doom, and it is told that in all the tumult not one leaf of the Tree flickered but hung still as if carved in stone. Within its shadow was calm: without tumult as when heaven and earth break together in storm.