A light laugh, and the window closed, "Good-night! Sleep well!" Love's best wish!—and for some sad souls life's last hope,—a "good-night and sleep well!" Poor tired World, for whose weary inhabitants oftentimes the greatest blessing is sleep! Good-night! sleep well! but the sleep implies waking.—waking to a morning of pleasure or sorrow,—or labor that is only lightened by,—Love! Love!—love divine,—love human,—and, sweetest love of all for us, as Christ has taught when both divine and human are mingled in one!
Alwyn, glancing up at the clustering stars, hanging like pendent fire-jewels above him, thought of this marvel-glory of Love,—this celestial visitant who, on noiseless pinions, comes flying divinely into the poorest homes, transfiguring common life with ethereal radiance, making toil easy, giving beauty to the plainest faces and poetry to the dullest brains. Love! its tremulous hand-clasp,—its rapturous kiss,—the speechless eloquence it gives to gentle eyes!—the grace it bestows on even the smallest gift from lover to beloved, were such gift but a handful of meadow blossoms tied with some silken threads of hair!
Not for the poet creator of "Nourhulma" such love any more,—had he not drained the cup of Passion to the dregs in the far Past, and tasted its mixed sweetness and bitterness to no purpose save self-indulgence? All that was over;—and yet, as he walked away from the bridge, back to his hotel in the quiet moonlight, he thought what a transcendent thing Love might be, even on earth, between two whose spirits were SPIRITUALLY AKIN,—whose lives were like two notes played in tuneful concord,—whose hearts beat echoing faith and tenderness to one another,—and who held their love as a sacred bond of union—a gift from God, not to be despoiled by that rough familiarity which surely brings contempt. And then before his fancy appeared to float the radiant visage of Edris, half-child, half-angel,—he seemed to see her beautiful eyes, so pure, so clear, so unshadowed by any knowledge of sin,—and the exquisite lines of a poet-contemporary, whose work he specially admired, occurred to him with singular suggestiveness:
"Oh, thou'lt confess that love from man to maid
Is more than kingdoms,—more than light and shade
In sky-built gardens where the minstrels dwell,
And more than ransom from the bonds of Hell.
Thou wilt, I say, admit the truth of this,
And half relent that, shrinking from a kiss,
Thou didst consign me to mine own disdain,
Athwart the raptures of a vision'd bliss.
"I'll seek no joy that is not linked with thine,
No touch of hope, no taste of holy wine,
And after death, no home in any star,
That is not shared by thee, supreme, afar
As here thou'rt first and foremost of all things!
Glory is thine, and gladness, and the wings
That wait on thought, when, in thy spirit-sway,
Thou dost invest a realm unknown to kings!"
Had not she, Edris, consigned him to his "own disdain, Athwart the raptures of a visioned bliss?" Ay! truly and deservedly!—and this disdain of himself had now reached its culminating point,—namely, that he did not consider himself worthy of her love,—or worthy to do aught than sink again into far spaces of darkness and perpetually retrospective Memory, there to explore the uttermost depths of anguish, and count up his errors one by one from the very beginning of life, in every separate phase he had passed through, till he had penitently striven his best to atone for them all! Christ had atoned! yes,—but was it not almost base on his part to shield himself with that Divine Light and do nothing further? He could not yet thoroughly grasp the amazing truth that ONE ABSOLUTELY PURE act of faith in Christ, blots out Past Sin forever,—it seemed too marvellous and great a boon!
When he retired to rest that night he was fully and firmly PREPARED TO DIE. With this expectation upon him he was nevertheless happy and tranquil. The line—"Glory is thine, and gladness, and the wings" haunted him, and he repeated it over and over again without knowing why. Wings! the brilliant shafts of radiance that part angels from mortals,—wings, that, after all, are not really wings, but lambent rays of living lightning, of which neither painter nor poet has any true conception, . . long, dazzling rays such as encircled God's maiden, Edris, with an arch of roseate effulgence, so that the very air was sunset-colored in the splendor of her presence! How if she were a wingless angel,—made woman?
"Glory is thine, and gladness, and the wings!" And with the name of his angel-love upon his lips he closed his eyes and sank into a deep and dreamless slumber.