With her soul grew her love; this purest of love, and yet strongest of passions. Her young limbs became stronger, her young chest broader, her shoulders and her back finer: a firmer pulse throbbed in her veins. So the soul enlarged as day after day of musing passed, and those long half-conscious reveries which are to the soul as sleep to the frame. She rejoiced in the morning and the sunrise, and felt the glowing beauty of the day; she saw the night and its stars, and knew the grandeur of the earth’s measured onward roll eastwards, the hexameter of heaven.
She saw these things because at her birth love was born with her; the flame was lit with her life, and must burn till the end.
There are but few men, one only they say in many, many years, in whom the fire of genius is clear from youth. These are born—such cannot be educated up from common material. There are but few women (though more in proportion than such men) in whom the divine flame of unutterable love exists from the first moment of consciousness, still growing with their growth. The mark of love was stamped on Felise’s forehead.
Hence the sweetness of the morning to her; hence the joy of swimming in the clear green sea; the pleasure of rowing; of running on the hills; the beauty of the flowers. She brought to all a song—the song of her heart. So that it is true to say that she loved before she had seen the object of her love. Who should have her would have a twofold Felise—the outward beauty of the woman, the inward beauty of her soul.
IV
Felise listened to the larks as they rose and sang—now one, now two, now six or seven at once. They did not soar to a great height; but, starting from a field of clover beneath, came up a little above the level where she sat, and sang like a chorus before her. She listened, and in her heart silently asked the same as they did aloud. Over their nests and their beloved ones they uttered their verses, in melody requiring of the sun and of the earth happiness for these, and for themselves permission to live.
Chanting their welcome to the sun, they breathlessly poured out a prayer demanding, in a thousand trills, that the joy of day and life might descend upon their homes. They sank to the clover, but speedily came up again, restless in their gladness, eager to acknowledge the benefit of day, eager to secure fulfilment of their hopes for their young, fearful lest they had not expressed themselves sufficiently, lest they had seemed ungrateful.
Felise asked in her heart the same as they did. Her overflowing heart asked happiness for the image that now filled it; for herself only that she might contribute to his happiness—that she might sacrifice herself—that she might lay down her life for him.
Of old, old time the classic women in the “Violet Land” of Greece went out to the sunrise, and, singing to Apollo, the sun, prayed that their hearts might be satisfied, and their homes secured; by the fountain they asked of the water that the highest aspirations of their souls might be fulfilled; of the earth they asked an abundance for those whom they loved.
No more the hymn is heard to the sun; no more the stream murmurs in an undertone to the chorus of human hopes; no more the earth sees its wheat and its flowers taken from it to be presented to it again upon the altar in token of gratitude and prayer.
But still the larks, as then, and still the thrushes, the fleeting swallows, and the doves, address themselves to sun, and earth, and stream, and heaven. Their songs vary not, their creed does not change, their prayer goes forth to the same old gods.
Have our hopes and hearts changed in the centuries? No; not one whit.
Felise asked the same as many a deep-breasted maiden in the days of Apollo and Aphrodite. Only her heart was pure, and uncontaminated even by any sensuous myth.
The larks sang out of the fullness of their hearts; they were not conscious that they prayed, though in truth they did. Her heart spoke without volition, she was not aware she was praying. With all her being she demanded that joy might reach her beloved, that she might lie like the dust at his feet, in her sacrifice her triumph.
Came the sun in all his glory, and the wind from the sea; the deep azure sky was over her, the woods and the green wheat below. The hills were all her own; there was no one else to claim them in the morning. She alone looked at the sky, and it was hers. Could she have done so, she would have given the wide earth and all its fruits to her beloved.
The richness of the corn in the plain, and of the luxuriant grasses in the meadow; the ancient oaks and the thousand elms; the hedges hung with honeysuckle, and where the roses were coming; the sweet waters, and the flowers that stood by them; all that grew afar to the horizon. Nor was that enough. The dim blue sea yonder, the bright blue heavens, the glowing light; she would have given him all for his delight, as a goddess of old time might have taken a mortal in her chariot through the ether.
She was leaning on her arm, reclining on the sward, and the throbs of her heart vibrated through her arm to the earth. Quickened by the violence of her run up the hill it beat rapidly, causing her arm to tremble slightly. It was meet that so noble a heart should rest upon the boundless earth. There the rudeness of its beat diminished, and the vehemence of the vibration subsided.
But not so the vehemence of the passion within. The glowing light
