unto themselves new lovers, and the world wagged well in Dreamland.

But Maud was a truer soul than any amongst them: she prayed hourly
for Jason's prosperity, and was trusting and hopeful until it seemed
almost that something had whispered to her the fate of the voyagers.
Then she mourned night and day: she went into retirement with the
sweet-faced nuns at the headland, whose secluded life had ever been
very grateful to her. She gave out of her bounty to all who asked, and
rested not then, but sought the sick and the suffering, and they were
comforted, and blessed her who had blessed them. They began to think
her half an angel in Dreamland, and it seemed as though she were not
made for this world at all. The same thing happens now occasionally,
and in this way we acknowledge our shortcomings before our fellow-men
and women when we find some one considerably above the average who
shames us into confessing it. I hope the Recording Angel is within
hearing at these precious moments.

The world certainly possessed no charms for one of Maud's temperament:
it never did possess any for her. She was as out of place in it as a
mourning dove in a city mob. Her spirit sought tranquillity, and she
found it in the serene and changless convent life. You and I might
seek in vain for anything like peace of spirit in such a place: we
might find it a stale and profitless imprisonment; and perhaps it
speaks badly for both of us that it is so. The violet finds its silent
cell in the earth-crevice by the hidden spring a sufficient refuge,
and rejoices in it, but the sea-grass that has all its life tossed in
the surges would think that a very dull sort of existence. There are
human violets in the world, and human sunflowers and poppies, and
doves also, and apes and alligators; and some of them come within one
of being inhuman; and sometimes that _one_ drops out, and the inhuman