plucked a rose from her garden, while a pang pierced his heart till it
ached again, and a thorn probed his finger till a drop of blood
fell upon a myrtle leaf; which leaf Maud coveted, and keeps to this
day--hugged to her in her grave-clothes.

It is of course best that this life should not be perfect, for the
life to come might suffer by comparison; yet it is one of the cruelest
decrees of Nature--if Nature has really decreed what seems so wholly
against her--that a woman's heart must bide its time and be silent in
the presence of its natural mate while every attribute of her being
implores his recognition; and that the truest men are too honorable
or too proud to yield themselves, having no offering but their honest
love to lay at the feet of their mistresses. If it were not so, the
princess would not have mourned in her garden for her flown mate, and
there would have been much happiness on short notice.

Driven forth by the propitious winds, the barque fled from the shore,
while Maud, seated among her roses, with weeping and wringing of
hands, poured out upon the winds the burden of her love.

Why didn't Jason catch a syllable of that fervent prayer, reef, and
come home to her? Then I need not have written this history, and all
would have been well in Dreamland. But he didn't. He heard nothing
but the sibilant waters as they rushed under his keel: he thought of
nothing but the rose that was withering in the secret locker of his
cabin, and of the wound in his heart that was gaping and as fresh as
ever. So the night-winds hurried him onward, and the darkness absorbed
the outlines of the dear Dreamland coast.

Maud watched the barque while it lessened and lessened in the