Coralie, close enfolded, pacing the world together, o'er hill and
plain, through storied cities, past rows of applauding
relations,--I in my Sunday knickerbockers, she in her pink and
spangles.

Summers sicken, flowers fail and die, all beauty but rides round
the ring and out at the portal; even so Coralie passed in her
turn, poised sideways, panting, on her steed; lightly swayed as a
tulip-bloom, bowing on this side and on that as she disappeared;
and with her went my heart and my soul, and all the light and the
glory and the entrancement of the scene.

Harold woke up with a gasp. "Wasn't she beautiful?" he said, in
quite a subdued way for him. I felt a momentary pang. We had
been friendly rivals before, in many an exploit; but here was
altogether a more serious affair. Was this, then, to be the
beginning of strife and coldness, of civil war on the hearthstone
and the sundering of old ties? Then I recollected the true
position of things, and felt very sorry for Harold; for it was
inexorably written that he would have to give way to me, since I
was the elder. Rules were not made for nothing, in a sensibly
constructed universe.

There was little more to wait for, now Coralie had gone; yet I
lingered still, on the chance of her appearing again. Next
moment the clown tripped up and fell flat, with magnificent
artifice, and at once fresh emotions began to stir. Love had
endured its little hour, and stern ambition now asserted itself.
Oh, to be a splendid fellow like this, self-contained, ready of
speech, agile beyond conception, braving the forces of society,