must give of his or her best.  The artist must give his noblest art, not for what it brings to him personally of gain or renown, but for what it does to others in the way of uplifting;—­the poet must give his highest thought, not for praise, but for love;—­the very craftsman must do his best and strongest work not for the coin paid, but for the fact that it is work, and as such must be done well—­and none must imagine that they can waste the forces wherewith they have been endowed.  For no waste and no indolence is permitted, and in the end no selfishness.  The attitude of the selfish human being is pure disintegration,—­a destroying microbe which crumbles and breaks down the whole constitution, not only ruining the body but the mind, and frequently making havoc of the very wealth that has been too selfishly guarded.  For wealth is ephemeral as fame—­only Love and the Soul are the lasting things of God, the Makers of Life and the Rulers of Eternity.”

So far I read—­then laying down my book I listened.  Music, solemn and exquisitely beautiful, stole on my ears from the far distance—­ it seemed to float through the open window as though in a double chorus—­rising from the sea and falling from the heavens.  Delicious harmonies trembled through the air, soft as fine rain falling on roses,—­and with their penetrating tenderness a thousand suggestions, a thousand memories came to me, all infinitely sweet.  I began to think that even if Rafel Santoris were separated from me by some mischance, or changed to me in any way, it need not affect me over-much so long as I cherished the love I had for him in my own soul.  Our passion was of a higher quality than the merely material,- -it was material and spiritual together, the spiritual predominating, thus making of it the only passion that can last.  What difference could a few years more or less bring, if we were bound, by the eternal laws governing us, to become united in the end?  The joy of life is to love rather than to be loved,—­and the recipient of love is never so fully conscious of perfect happiness as the giver.

The music went on in varying moods of lovely harmony, and my mind, like a floating cloud, drifted lazily above the waves of sound.  I thought compassionately of the unrest and discontent of thousands who devote themselves to the smallest and narrowest aims in life,—­ people with whom the loss of a mere article of wearing apparel is more important than a national difficulty—­people who devote all their faculties to social schemes of self-aggrandisement—­people who discuss trifles till discussion is worn threadbare, and ears are tired and brain is weary—­people who, assuming to be religious and regular church-goers, yet do the meanest things, and have no scruple in playing the part of tale-bearer and mischief-maker, setting themselves deliberately to break friendships and destroy love—­ people who talk of God as though He were their intimate, and who have by their very lives drawn everything of God out of them—­I