beheld of the radiant indistinct whom he adored with more of spirit in
his passion than before this tempest. A giant going through a giant's
contortions, fleshly as the race of giants, and gross, coarse, dreadful,
likely to be horrible when whipped and stirred to the dregs, Alvan was
great-hearted: he could love in his giant's fashion, love and lay down
life for the woman he loved, though the nature of the passion was not
heavenly; or for the friend who would have to excuse him often; or for
the public cause--which was to minister to his appetites. He was true
man, a native of earth, and if he could not quit his huge personality to
pipe spiritual music during a storm of trouble, being a soul wedged in
the gnarled wood of the standing giant oak, and giving mighty sound of
timber at strife rather than the angelical cry, he suffered, as he loved,
to his depths.

We have not to plumb the depths; he was not heroic, but hugely man.
Love and man sometimes meet for noble concord; the strings of the hungry
instrument are not all so rough that Love's touch on them is
indistinguishable from the rattling of the wheels within; certain herald
harmonies have been heard. But Love, which purifies and enlarges us,
and sets free the soul, Love visiting a fleshly frame must have time and
space, and some help of circumstance, to give the world assurance that
the man is a temple fit for the rites. Out of romances, he is not
melodiously composed. And in a giant are various giants to be slain,
or thoroughly subdued, ere this divinity is taken for leader. It is not
done by miracle.

As it happened cruelly for Alvan, the woman who had become the radiant
indistinct in his desiring mind was one whom he knew to be of a shivery
stedfastness. His plucking her from another was neither wonderful nor
indefensible; they two were suited as no other two could be; the handsome