"Of what are you thinking, Solarion ?"

"Of something which might not please you," came the slow reply. "Pray let me hear it, nevertheless."

"Well, it is this: If you have so lucid an idea of just how the loftiest unselfishness has been gradually lifted from far inferior grades of feeling, why should you yourself ever have known the least wish to gratify individual ambition and place your name proudly above those of your fellows? Why are you a contradiction of your own beliefs? For such mental power and cultivation as yours ought surely

"I understand you," Kenneth interrupted, with clouding brows. . . He strove not to be angry, and succeeded.

They held many more talks together during the next few days. Kenneth was meanwhile burning to see Celia again, and at length he paid her a second visit. She treated him with what seemed to him a tyrannic cruelty. He left her, saying to himself, 'She loathes me. I am beardless, and still look like an overgrown boy. She has never forgotten how Caryl Dayton used to jeer at my effeminacy.'

One day, not long afterward, he learned through Hilda that Caryl Dayton was occupying his old residence, near to that of Celia. The tidings dealt him an acute shock. Nor was it pleasanter to learn that through the deaths of three or four members of his family Caryl had been made much richer than formerly.

'She teems with a flirt's worst trickeries,' Kenneth told himself. 'I shall never enter her doors again,-never!'

The next day he entered them, and found himself face to face with Caryl Dayton.

He acquitted himself execrably, and knew it all the while. It was the past repeating itself in pitiless recurrence, except that then he had merely loved Celia (or so he now assured his fluttering heart), while at present he worshipped her. Caryl Dayton, looking a little older, but none the less well-bred and suave, inflicted torture by his presence. Kenneth had no courtesies for him; every grace in the man was like a veiled challenge. When Dayton rose and quitted the room he was equally preyed upon by wrath and satisfaction.

"So," he at once said, with absurdly awkward reproach, to Celia, you are friends with that man, after all! You told me did you not tell me?-that you and he had broken with one another forever !"

"I forget, Kenneth, just what I told you," she said, with an exasperating calm. "Anyway, we're very good friends now."

"Good friends! Does that mean

"Oh, never mind what it means."

"But I do mind," fumed Kenneth. "I. . I love you, and I do mind," he added, hearing his own heart beat while he framed the words.

She smiled. "You love only your books and your science," she said, carelessly. . . And then he went to where she sat, and put out both his hands, and cried to her from the hungry depths of his soul,"No, no, Celia! I love only you! I loved you long ago, and thought I'd crushed all that love down. But it rose again when I saw you. I love you now more than ever! I want you to be my wife!

Celia, don't look like that, in the name of all that's merciful! Can't you love me?”

"No," she said.

Her answer had been implacable. He went home, that day, with a dim understanding that he could go to her again and be on amical terms with her, but that he must never, under any circumstances, refer to his vivid and dominant passion. .

Solarion found him a most faultful and derelict instructor, now. They took their long walks together, but these were the sombre makeshifts that replaced former hours of stimulating discussion. "You suggest so much to me, Solarion," Kenneth had not long ago said. And yet in his once-prized friend much of the old fascinating influence had perished. They would now and then speak most freely to one another, and their converse was full of the best and happiest significance. Solarion learned the apparent meaning to the human mind of what we name natural beauty. Kenneth and he went together often again into the heart of those delightful Vermont mountains. They watched the flight of sunshine over great foliage-clad slopes; they paused, side by side, near lakes almost as enchanting as Constance or Como. They heard the silvery plash of cascades, and the delicious basso profundo of streams which emptied their angry waters into shady gorges.

"You feel nature, do you not, Solarion?" Kenneth said, one day, as they sat within a great grove of primeval hemlocks, dusky as the cloister of a cathedral, with vague whispering noises in the boughs overhead. "You recognize alike the mystery and the splendor of its revelations ?"

"Yes," answered Solarion.

"Do you feel, too, that there is a conscious and active God behind it? I have often fancied that you do."

"I feel that there should be," said Solarion, gravely.

Kenneth drew closer to his companion. The plashing of a dulcet water-fall was near them. Between rifts in fringy hemlock-boughs gleamed the turquoise of a stainless midsummer heaven. "Oh, Solarion, I am so unhappy!" Kenneth cried, and as he spoke his face was buried in the tender down of his friend's neck, that gave forth a scent delicate, sweet, and yet nameless as that of the garments of a pure, healthful woman. "I am so unhappy!" he went on, and then, suddenly, he burst into a passionate flood of tears.

For some time he sobbed his misery out upon the soft and massive breast of Solarion. The silky fleece was drenched with his hot tears when he lifted his eyes and saw that Solarion also had been weeping.

"You know why I am so wretched," exclaimed Kenneth. "I see that you do! You understand me!"

"Yes," Solarion answered; "I understand you. If there were anything I could do to help you! But I am so powerless! It seems to me that she must love you as you deserve to be loved. But if she does not you must force her to do so."

"Force her, Solarion?"

"Woo her, win her,-make her love you. She must see, sooner

VOL. XLIV.-24

or later, that nature could not have given you such a pulse of passion unless there were a corresponding ardor in her."

"Nature teems with mockeries and satires like this," replied Kenneth. "She does not love me; she never will! she will let me go to her

-I sometimes think that all she would ever care for is just to let me go to her and crouch at her feet in hopeless adoration!"

A day or two afterward Kenneth and Solarion were strolling together along a wayside rarely frequented, yet rich in picturesque effects of boulders half smothered with ferns, and in maple-groves that made the sward beneath them one incessant flicker of sunshine and shade. "This is the most exquisite solitude, Solarion," Kenneth had just said. "It is not far from the village, and yet we have not met a single wayfarer during all our tramp. Perhaps we shall not meet one till we have ended it."

"Here is one," said Solarion,-" a woman, with her hands full of ferns and wild-flowers. Do you see? She has just turned the bend in the road.”

Yes, Kenneth saw, and with a great throb of the heart. It was Celia. She had been taking an afternoon ramble. She was warm, and had pushed back her hat a little from her brows, over which the glossy dark curls wildly clustered and twisted.

Kenneth was deeply embarrassed when they met, but Solarion soon supplied a surcease to his confusion. "Ah," cried Celia, "is he yours? Yes, yes, I remember. They have told me of him; his beauty has made everybody talk,-everybody who has seen him. Is he not superb?" She forgot her wild-flowers and ferns, almost tossing them aside. She dropped on her knees before Solarion, looking up at Kenneth. "He is not fierce, is he?" she pursued. "How can he be, with those great, sweet eyes?"

"He is not fierce," Kenneth answered, and then Celia's arms were about Solarion's neck.

"Oh, how perfect he is!" she exclaimed. "How strangely and wonderfully beautiful! Surely nothing was ever like him before! What is his name?"

"Solarion," said Kenneth.

"Solarion?.." Celia rose and surveyed her new idol with a glance that seemed to indicate the struggle between admiration and criticism. "It's a stately sort of name, but he is so stately and splendid! . . Ah, how I should love to have him for my own!"

Kenneth walked with her until their paths diverged, Solarion following.

"Her last act was a caress for you," he said to Solarion, after she had disappeared.

"You love her so much, then?" came the answer.

"She is life, happiness, everything, to me," replied Kenneth.

"I understand," Solarion murmured.

A day or two later Kenneth went to visit Celia.

She talked of

nothing but Solarion. There had never been so exquisite and glorious a creature. He was like a human being. Of course no price could purchase him.

"No,-none," said Kenneth.

He returned home with a heavy heart. He saw how Solarion pitied him.

The next day he went again to Celia. Caryl Dayton was with her as he entered the room in which she received him. He was almost insolent to Caryl, whose demeanor never lost a single trait of its high breeding. Agonized, he returned to his laboratory, where Solarion waited.

"I am in torture," he said.

"Can nothing be done?" Solarion responded.

"Yes," he said, scoffingly.

"She adores you. I can give you to her. Will you become hers? You might tell me, then, of what passes between herself and Dayton." He spoke in a swift, odd, wild way. "Do you mean it?" Solarion said.

"Yes, yes," returned Kenneth, desperately.

"That man is a torment to me. I don't know what he may feel toward her. They were engaged, once."

"You are bitterly jealous."

"Yes."

"And wish that I should become her companion, so that ...?" Kenneth knelt down beside Solarion. "I don't know what I wish!" he cried. "I only know that I am very miserable!"...

The next day was perfect. Flocculent clouds voyaged across a sky of the richest azure, and the trees were vocal with soft breezes. Kenneth and Solarion went together to Celia's dwelling. She welcomed Kenneth's associate with an undisguised fondness.

"Do you want him for your own?" Kenneth presently said. "He is yours, if you do."

"Mine" cried Celia. fondly embracing him. no! You can't mean it! him ?"

She rained kisses upon Solarion, again "Mine!" she cried once more. "Oh, no, Don't you love him too much to part with

"I love you," said Kenneth. "I love you so much that I will give him to you."

Celia burst into tears. "Give him to me!" she exclaimed. "Oh, do you mean it! But he will be unhappy! He will long for you... Will you not, Solarion?..." And her head fell among the stainless curls of the mute, grand creature.

Kenneth had given his gift... He went home, and felt very lonely for a day or two. Solarion had been willing; he was with her; he would come back, in a little while, and tell what had passed. "Point toward my home," Kenneth had said to Celia, "and he will come to He is wonderfully intelligent, as you will find."

me.

But Solarion did not come. Two, three, four, five days went by. At last, however, he appeared. Kenneth eagerly welcomed him. "You come late, though," he said,-"strangely late. What have you found out? Does she love Caryl Dayton ?"

"No. She loves no one. She is there in her mourning, and he visits her, but that is all."

"All, Solarion?"

"All. She does not care for him. He adores her, but she cannot like him in return. . . She is so beautiful and so lovable! It is all so sad! Yesterday she looked into my eyes and spoke to me in a fierce, melancholy voice. 'Solarion,' she cried, what are you?' And then her arms were about my neck. . . . Let me remain with you now... I will not go back to her, unless—”

"But come to me

"No; go back to her," broke in Kenneth. again, Solarion, and report what has passed between herself and him." Kenneth never dreamed of suspecting the truth.

More days passed, and Solarion did not return. Kenneth went to Celia. It was morning, and she sat on the piazza, with Solarion at her

feet.

"He has grown fond of me," she said. "I am so glad and grateful that you gave him to me!"

"But your gratitude," said Kenneth, "will show itself in no other way. You will not be my wife, Celia?"

No," she replied.

Solarion went with him for a little way past the house. When they had come to a certain lonely place on the roadside, Solarion paused and spoke.

"I cannot endure this longer," he said.

"Endure?" repeated Kenneth.

"I have told you. . . This man's-brain that belongs to me has begotten a man's love. I am so far human that I love Čelia. I love her, yes, as you do! She looks into my eyes and seems to see there some strange, divine spirit. She herself does not understand. . . I burn to speak to her. It is not the brute in me that she cares for; she would loathe that if she had any real conception of the force that rules her. It is my identity, my soul, my intellect,-all that you have called out of chaos and given to me. She is ignorant of what she truly feels. But her instinct, ideal and yet earthly, tells her that I am human!"

"Not another word!" shot from Kenneth. "How dare you speak to me like this!" He drew backward and raised the stout staff which he carried.

"Ah," retorted Solarion, "how did you dare create me? Am I to blame? And why should I merit your scorn? This love of mine is chastity itself; it is pure as a saint's dream of his heaven!"

Solarion, hush! It is infamy!—it is horror!"

With those words Kenneth fled to his laboratory. But Solarion followed him thither, like an accusing conscience.

"What is to be done?" he questioned.

"Done?" faltered Kenneth. He fell trembling into a chair while he spoke. "You . . you have told her nothing?" "Nothing. But you must tell her."

"I ?"

"Yes. I demand it of you. I cannot live like this."

"You must so live, Solarion.

upon her again."

"No. I must return to her."

Remain here with me. Never look