“I hate your reflections about the human kind, Griggs, and I do not like your way of looking at women.  You hate women so!”

“No.  You like my descriptions of the ‘ideal creatures I rave about’ much better, it seems.  Upon my soul, friend, if you want a criterion of yourself, take this conversation.  A fortnight ago to-day—­or to-morrow, will it be?—­I was lecturing you about the way to regard women; begging you to consider that they had souls and were capable of loving, as well as of being loved.  And here you are accusing me of hating the whole sex, and without the slightest provocation on my part, either.  Here is Birnam wood coming to Dunsinane with a vengeance!”

“Oh, I don’t deny it.  I don’t pretend to argue about it.  I have changed a good deal in the last month.”  He pensively crossed one leg over the other as he lay back on the long chair and pulled at his slipper.  “I suppose I have—­changed a good deal.”

“No wonder.  I presume your views of immortality, the future state of the fair sex, and the application of transcendental analysis to matrimony, all changed about the same time?”

“Don’t be unreasonable,” he answered.  “It all dates from that evening when I had that singular fit and the vision I related to you.  I have never been the same man since; and I am glad of it.  I now believe women to be much more adorable than you painted them, and not half enough adored.”  Suddenly he dropped the extremely English manner which he generally affected in the idiom and construction of his speech, and dropped back into something more like his own language.  “The star that was over my life is over it no longer.  I have no life-star any longer.  The jewel of the southern sky withdraws his light, paling before the white gold from the northern land.  The gold that shall be mine through all the cycles of the sun, the gold that neither man nor monarch shall take from me.  What have I to do with stars in heaven?  Is not my star come down to earth to abide with me through life?  And when life is over and the scroll is full, shall not my star bear me hence, beyond the fiery foot-bridge, beyond the paradise of my people and its senseless sensuality of houris and strong wine?  Beyond the very memory of limited and bounded life, to that life eternal where there is neither limit, nor bound, nor sorrow?  Shall our two souls not unite and be one soul to roam through the countless circles of revolving outer space?  Not through years, or for times, or for ages—­but for ever?  The light of life is woman, the love of life is the love of woman; the light that pales not, the life that cannot die, the love that can know not any ending; my light, my life, and my love!” His whole soul was in his voice, and his whole heart; the twining white fingers, the half-closed eyes, and the passionate quivering tone, told all he had left unsaid.  It was surely a high and a noble thing that he felt, worthy of the man in his beauty of mind