out of the dream, I must have awakened, for, cruel as it was, the dream
was but part of a greater dream, the dream of my love for you--"

"But I understand it all now," he continued, "see it all. Do you
remember saying that perhaps I had never loved anything but images all
my life? It was quite true. Since I can remember, when I thought I loved
something I was sure to find sooner or later that I loved less the
object itself than what I could say about it, and when I had said
something beautiful, something I could remember and say over and over to
myself, I cared little if the object were removed. The spiritual essence
of it seemed to have passed over into my words, and I loved the
reincarnation best. Only at last have I awakened to realities, and the
shadows flee away. The worshipper of the Image is dead within me. But
alas! that little Wonder had to die first--"

"I used to tell myself," he went on, "that human life, however
exquisite, without art to eternalise it, was like a rose showering its
petals upon the ground. For so brief a space the rose stood perfect,
then fell in a ruin of perfume. Wonderful moments had human life, but
without art were they not like pearls falling into a gulf? So I said:
there is nothing real but art. The material of art passes--human love,
human beauty--but art remains. It is the image, not the reality, that
is everlasting. I will live in the image."

"But I know now," he once more resumed, "that there is a higher
immortality than art's,--the immortality of love. The immortality of art
indeed is one of those curious illusions of man's self-love which a
moment's thought dispels. Art, who need be told, is as dependent for its
survival on the survival of its physical media as man's body itself--and
though the epic and the great canvas escape combustion for a million