the priest, and when she had left them his brain was in a
tumult and was filled with memories of her words and gestures,
and of the sweet fearlessness of her manner. Beautiful women
he had known before as beautiful women, but the saving grace
in his nature had never before been so deeply roused by what
was fine as well as beautiful. It seemed as though it were
too complete and perfect. For he assured himself that she
possessed everything--those qualities which he had never
valued before because he believed them to be unattainable, and
those others which he had made his idols. She was with him,
mind and heart and soul, in the one desire of his life that he
took seriously; she was of his religion, she was more noble
than his noble sisters, and she was more beautiful than the
day. In the first glow of the meeting it seemed to him as
though fate had called them to do this work together,--she
from the far shore of the Pacific, and he from his rocky
island in the Middle Sea. And he saw with cruel distinctness,
that if there were one thing wanting, it was himself. He
worshipped her before he had bowed his first good-by to her,
and that night he walked for miles up and down the long
lengths of the avenue of the Champs-Elysees, facing the great
change that she had brought into his life, but knowing himself
to be utterly unfit for her coming. He felt like an unworthy
steward caught at his master's return unprepared, with ungirt
loins, and unlighted lamp. Nothing he had done since he was a
child gave him the right to consider himself her equal. He
was not blinded by the approaches which other daughters and
the mothers of daughters had made him. He knew that what was
enough to excuse many things in their eyes might find no
apology in hers. He looked back with the awakening of a child