wonderful foliage to creep about the text, and showing the blossom of
certain mystical flowers, with emblems of strange creatures, caught and
bound in rose thickets. All was dedicated to love and a lover's madness,
and there were songs in it which haunted him with their lilt and refrain.
When the book was finished it replaced the loose leaves as his constant
companion by day and night. Three times a day he repeated his ritual to
himself, seeking out the loneliest places in the woods, or going up to
his room; and from the fixed intentness and rapture of his gaze, the
father thought him still severely employed in the questionable process of
composition. At night he contrived to wake for his strange courtship; and
he had a peculiar ceremony when he got up in the dark and lit his candle.
From a steep and wild hillside, not far form the house, he had cut from
time to time five large boughs of spiked and prickly gorse. He had
brought them into the house, one by one, and had hidden them in the big
box that stood beside his bed. Often he woke up weeping and murmuring
to himself the words of one of his songs, and then when he had lit the
candle, he would draw out the gorse-boughs, and place them on the floor,
and taking off his nightgown, gently lay himself down on the bed of
thorns and spines. Lying on his face, with the candle and the book before
him, he would softly and tenderly repeat the praises of his dear, dear
Annie, and as he turned over page after page, and saw the raised gold of
the majuscules glow and flame in the candle-light, he pressed the thorns
into his flesh. At such moments he tasted in all its acute savor the joy
of physical pain; and after two or three experiences of such delights he
altered his book, making a curious sign in vermilion on the margin of the
passages where he was to inflict on himself this sweet torture. Never
did he fail to wake at the appointed hour, a strong effort of will broke
through all the heaviness of sleep, and he would rise up, joyful though
weeping, and reverently set his thorny bed upon the floor, offering his
pain with his praise. When he had whispered the last word, and had risen