With these words Aunt Jane closed the treasure-chest of memory and walked briskly away to look after the welfare of the tulips and hyacinths.
A little story of a great love! And as I pondered it, the country doctor became a knight of a finer chivalry than that which once stirred the blood under a coat of mail, or guided a lance-thrust to an enemy's heart. In every man's soul there is a field of valor, lonely, perhaps unknown; and he is the true knight who enters the lists against himself and strikes down every impulse of man's nature that would harm the woman he loves. And how rich the guerdon of such a victory, and the recompense of the beloved one for whose sake he strives and conquers!
The pitying world looks on and measures the unwed lovers' loss, but who can measure their gain? Theirs is the bliss which Psyche had before she lit the fatal lamp. They hold forever in their hearts "the consecration and the poet's dream"; and, undimmed by disillusionment, the mirage of youthful love hovers over each solitary path, lighting the twilight of age, the night of death and melting at last into the dawn of heaven's unending day.