and forcible spirit, vastly rich in all three particulars, that has
strength enough to live! Ah, is it surely so? There is such a dark
sympathy between us, she knows me so well, she touches my inmost so at
unawares, that I could almost think I had a companion here. Perhaps not so
soon. At the end of centuries I might wed one; not now."

But once he said to Sibyl Dacy, "Ah, how sweet it would be--sweet for me,
at least--if this intercourse might last forever!"

"That is an awful idea that you present," said Sibyl, with a hardly
perceptible, involuntary shudder; "always on this hill-top, always passing
and repassing this little hillock; always smelling these flowers! I always
looking at this deep chasm in your brow; you always seeing my bloodless
cheek!--doing this till these trees crumble away, till perhaps a new
forest grew up wherever this white race had planted, and a race of savages
again possess the soil. I should not like it. My mission here is but for a
short time, and will soon be accomplished, and then I go."

"You do not rightly estimate the way in which the long time might be
spent," said Septimius. "We would find out a thousand uses of this world,
uses and enjoyments which now men never dream of, because the world is
just held to their mouths, and then snatched away again, before they have
time hardly to taste it, instead of becoming acquainted with the
deliciousness of this great world-fruit. But you speak of a mission, and
as if you were now in performance of it. Will you not tell me what it
is?"

"No," said Sibyl Dacy, smiling on him. "But one day you shall know what it
is,--none sooner nor better than you,--so much I promise you."