bitterness. Nor were these the only confusing elements in that renewed intercourse. XI The world's scorn (and by the 'world' he does not here imply strangers and insufficient judges only), the writer is well aware, attends constancy in passion, so long and so hopeless as that here recorded. There is a justice in this verdict: it arises from a tacit sense that, by such unchanging persistence, man sets himself in opposition to Nature. Nature, I have often feared, is in league with the baseness of our blood against fidelity. There is at least a distraction which at last supervenes on long unconvinced despair, and although consistent with perfect sanity of soul, appears to shake the mind from its balance with superstitious imaginations, with a strange credulous incredulity. To such a hope, the all. and the everything of life, and to such sorrow, truly I knew not what was, or was not possible. I regretted the time when incantations, when personal prowess, when the trial of many years in regions of glamour rewarded Agrican or Amadis with the prize of loyal faith. I looked round for miracles: I would have accepted omens. To such depths may despair compel sanity. Once driving late homewards from a scene of unshared festive cheerfulness, I remember that a straw lying at my feet glittered in the occasional lamplight, and seemed to demand attention. I took it up; it shaped out the letter T: I fancied this expressed some hint or prophecy, and held it long, endeavouring to read the explanation. I wondered if with this straw the first letter of her name could be formed in a moment I bent it to that figure I was astonished at the facility with which this lifeless thing adopted the desired shape, and threw it down in a certain terror. As he passed a turnpike, I heard my driver call out the number for that evening. This appeared another augury: I transposed the figures into the correspondent letters of a numerical alphabet I had learned in childhood, and hoped that here at least, by the ordainment of Chance or Providence, might be some elucidation of a future, in which I could discover no sign of happiness by the horoscopy of reason. เ Night repeated the visions of day with deeper intensity: it surprized me that I should discover the full force of a passion already so all-paramount over waking life, when wandering in the shadowy land and amongst the creations of divine Oneiros'. Others, doubtless, with myself, will have felt this, and can witness to the truth of De Quincey's observation, that psychological experiences of deep suffering or joy first attain their entire fulness of ex'pression when they are reverberated from dreams.' Conformably to this law, at times the vision presented fancied slights, the contemptuous criticism of spectators, acts of petty cowardice or gaucherie on my own part, with a vividness and exaggeration which made even waking consciousness less discomfortable. I was wandering through the trees of the Tesoretto', which seemed set now by whispering and languid waves; and although I never saw the sun, his light was the more spread around with a pure amber radiance, as though diffracted, and (if I may restore the word to its etymological sense) electricized by its passage through deep sea waters. Every one's dreamland probably has its landscape, and this was mine: And all was interfused beneath An atmosphere without a breath But something seemed unsupplied; and then I would see Désirée walking with sisters and friends, and when I came near she moved aside or answered in chilly words, and appeared to turn towards some other (whom I hated without recognizing, and that with a mean and dispiriting hatred) and give him my happiness. In varying forms this phantasmal drama beset me often; and when I woke the worst misery was, ignorance how far the dream might not be a true spiritual presentiment', a refraction from a yet unseen and rising calamity. 6 XII If such be the sleep of the grave, that last repose is little worth the coveting. But there were torments worse than the visions of pain. Once, years after, the dream, clothing itself in the circumstances of romantic pageantry, once at this time in the not less affecting circumstances of common life, mocked me with the irony of impossible blessedness. Nay by this illusory power actual scenes and words otherwise forgotten were recalled, I do not doubt, and fixed for ever in the memory; for enfranchised by sleep from Time and from Space, the soul, in Heracleitus' phrase diffused into the surrounding', visits the past and the distant, and the spirit vindicates its spirituality. Reserving for its proper place that later vision (to which I attempted to give metrical form), I shall narrate the other here: hardly less than many of the facts of life, it is part of my story. 6 Some one was at my side; there was one instant of uncertainty who she was; then I knew Désirée by her smile, and we were standing together within a court-yard attached to my father's house. But the building opposite, while maintaining its authentic dimensions, form, and arrangements, had undergone change in architectural features; for the square doorway had now taken the shape of a Norman arch, like the dark timeworn entrances to Rochester or Richmond castles. Nothing personal was antedated in the dream: I was aware of all that had intervened; of the lost love, of the surviving and recognized affection—the strangeness, in a word, as I have already described it—of the situation. And so, desirous to speak that I might hear her voice, yet to speak of matters in truth immaterial, I said 'My brother and I, 'whilst boys, amused ourselves in carving the doorway ' into that form which looks so strangely misplaced here, and decorating it with those Romanesque chevrons'. Désirée admired the ornaments which seemed rudely cut— a schoolboy's clasp-knife work, praising our youthful ingenuity with cordial smiles. 'A delight half graspable', as in Endymion's enchanted forest, flew above me as she spoke; and meanwhile the brickwork of the building had converted itself into the rough stone ashlar we see in ancient walls, gaps appeared in the archway, and the gate fell noiselessly as we watched it. But she only smiled again as one unsurprized, and I thought 'its work was over it stood long, and yielded at last'. Then we were suddenly within the house, talking with a friend I had not seen for many years, but now lying ill there. Désirée's animation and affectionate eagerness of sympathy, I felt, secretly increased whilst we spoke; and as I thought, 'It is nothing; this meeting will end like others: against เ all such hopes I must be resolute'; she moved quickly towards a window, and remarked that rain was falling fast, and she feared she must overstay that afternoon with us. 'But I will not inconvenience any one', she said, looking at me with a smile that ransomed years of regret and rejection; I will go down and see if the carriage is 'coming'. And then opening a door, as under impulse of that prior resolve I yet hesitated, she touched my hand; with hurried words,' she had something to tell', or to such 6 effect--but they were enough. I looked on her with great terror, wonder, and delight, like Dante when he too saw his Beloved in vision, as I followed Désirée : Chè dentro agli occhi suoi ardeva un riso Tal, ch'io pensai co' miei toccar lo fondo XIII We ran lightly down the stairs: the rustling of her dress, the light of her eyes, the sense, so inexpressibly sweet, that she was my entrusted companion, we two going together', in the gallant Homer's homely hearty phrase, these influences as if magically potent raised me to the summit of joy. So it seemed one instant; but the next, that height lay far beneath, as I heard Désirée's words confess to her tacit sense of an abso how strange, any one who unity of interests between us: เ เ saw you and me, would think all this'. Quali colombe dal disio chiamate with more exultation we pressed onwards, and were alone in a lower room. Beginning as usual without delay, she said, hurriedly, 'It is so long since we have met, 'you must have so much to tell me; I wish to know all 'you have been doing . . . And what have I done'? she continued rapidly, as if answering a question not uttered, 6 O, nothing but one's general long series of engagements, you know—dinners with duchesses and dowager countesses, and all that-Nothing at all, really; and we are going in the summer to' But I, inter rupting her before the favour of the moment should pass, and knowing she spoke thus to hide by many words her own thought from herself, 'You have no need to ask 'what I have done, or how I have suffered, dear no |