King Wanda bowed his weary head: then he knelt on the floor and kissed the brow of the favourite he had loved so well—and, looking into that pale and silent face, he thought he understood what the Dreamer had meant when, with the last touch of his brush, he had crowned Love's immaculate visage with a wreath of thorns.
XXX
And Beauty, Peace, and Sorrow are dreams within dreams.
Fiona Macleod.
In a distant land Spring was also spreading over hill and dale.
But on a bare plain, where nothing grew, a miracle had come to pass: a peasant, returning home one starry night, had espied, from the road upon which he was slowly sauntering, a strange light in the form of a cross, gleaming far over the barren waste.
Full of astonishment he had run to the spot, and there he had discerned a magic crystal, all charged with radiance, in the shape before which every Christian bends the knee. And the most curious of all, this burning cross was the hilt of a glistening sword which must have dropped from heaven, to remain thus firmly planted in the ground.
Awed and filled with wonder the youth had spread the astounding news from village to village, and all the simple folk had run together, falling down in worship before this miraculous sign, which God had put in so desert a place, as a blessing on the land.