Poet Laureate's infatuation awoke in him,--pity that any man could
he so reckless, blind, and desperate as to love a woman for her
mere perishable beauty of body, and never care to know whether the
graces of her mind were equal to the graces of her form.

"We men have yet to learn the true meaning of love,"--he mused
rather sadly--"We consider it from the selfish standpoint of our
own unbridled passions,--we willingly accept a fair face as the
visible reflex of a fair soul, and nine times out of ten, we are
utterly mistaken! We begin wrongly, and we therefore end
miserably,--we should love a woman for what she IS, and not for
what she appears to be. Yet, how are we to fathom her nature? how
shall we guess, . . how can we decide? Are we fooled by an evil
fate?--or do we in our loves and marriages deliberately fool
ourselves?"

He pondered the question hazily without arriving at any
satisfactory answer, . . and as Sah-luma still did not return, he
resumed his slow, unguided, and solitary way. He presently found
himself in a close boscage of tall trees straight as pines, and
covered with very large, thick leaves that exhaled a peculiarly
faint odor,--and here, pausing abruptly, he looked anxiously about
him. This was certainly not the avenue through which he had
previously come with Sah-luma, . . and he soon felt uncomfortably
convinced that he had somehow taken the wrong path. Perceiving a
low iron gate standing open in front of him, he went thither and
discovered a steep stone staircase leading down, down into what
seemed to be a vast well, black and empty as a starless midnight.
Peering doubtfully into this gloomy pit, he fancied he saw a
small, blue flame wavering to and fro at the bottom, and, pricked