Italian tale!--the days when, in the first flush of their wedded life,
they had set a seal of devotion and loyalty and love upon their arms,
which, long ago, had gone to the limbo of lost jewels, with the chaste,
fresh desires of worshipping hearts. Young egotists, supremely happy and
defiant in the pride of the fact that they loved each other, and that it
mattered little what the rest of the world enjoyed, suffered, and
endured--these were suddenly arrested in their buoyant and solitary
flight, and stirred restlessly in their seats. Old men whose days of
work were over; who no longer marshalled their legions, or moved at a nod
great ships upon the waters in masterful manoeuvres; whose voices were
heard no more in chambers of legislation, lashing partisan feeling to a
height of cruelty or lulling a storm among rebellious followers; whose
intellects no longer devised vast schemes of finance, or applied secrets
of science to transform industry--these heard the enthralling cry of a
soul with the darkness of eternal loss gathering upon it, and drew back
within themselves; for they too had cried like this one time or another
in their lives. Stricken, they had cried out, and ambition had fled
away, leaving behind only the habit of living, and of work and duty.

As Hylda, in the Duchess of Snowdon's box, listened with a face which
showed nothing of what she felt, and looking straight at the stage before
her, the words of a poem she had learned but yesterday came to her mind,
and wove themselves into the music thrilling from the voice in the stage
prison:

"And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence
For the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonised?
Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue
thence?
Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized?"