He did not know, but he smiled upon her notwithstanding, and made her talk and talk till the gush of the sweet child spirit with its hidden longings and but half understood aspirations, bathed his whole being in a reviving shower, and he felt as if he had wandered into a new world where the languors of the tropics were unknown, and passion, if there was such, had the wings of an eagle instead of the siren’s voice and fascination. Her name was Paula, she said, and before leaving he found that she was a relative of the woman he loved. This was a slight shock to him. The lily and the cactus abloom on one stalk! How could that be? and for a moment he felt as if the splendors of the glorious woman paled before the lustre of the innocent child. But the feeling, if it was strong enough to be called such, soon passed. As the days swept by bringing evenings with light and music and whispered words beneath the vine-leaves, the remembrance of the pure, sweet hour beside the river, gradually faded till only a vague memory of that gentle uplifted face sweet with its childish dimples, remained to hallow now and then a passing reverie or a fevered dream. But to-night its every lineament filled his soul, vying with the memories of his mother in its vividness and power. O why had he not learned the lesson it taught. Why had he turned his back upon the high things of life to yield himself to a current that swept him on and on until the power of resistance left him and—O dwell not here wild thoughts! Pause not on the threshold of the one dark memory that blasts the soul and sears the heart in the secret hours of night. Let the dead past bury its dead and if one must think, let it be of the hope, which the remembrance of that short glimpse into a pure if infantile soul has given to his long darkened spirit. One, two, three, FOUR; and the fire is dead and the night has grown chill, but he heeds it not. He has asked himself if his life’s book is quite closed to the higher joys of existence? whether money getting and money holding is to absorb him body and soul forever; and with the question a great yearning seizes him to look upon that sweet child again, if haply in the gleam of her pure spirit, something of the noble and the pure that lay beneath the crust of life might be again revealed to his longing sight. “She must be a great girl now,” murmured he to himself, “as old as if not older than she whom Bertram adores so passionately, but she will always be a child to me, a sweet pure child whose innocence is my teacher and whose ignorance is my better wisdom. If anything will save me—” But here the shadow settled again; when it lifted, the morning ray lay cool and ghostly over the hearthstone. IX. PAULA. “The stars of midnight shall be dear To her; and she shall lean her ear In many a secret place Where rivulets dance their wayward round, And beauty born of murmuring sound Shall pass into her face.” —WORDSWORTH.