than clay. A vague sense of some fearful barrier between herself and
her kind haunted the woman's soul within her, and the unquenchable
flames of the Spark seemed to girdle her with a defence that drove
away even friendly ingress. Night and day she wept, oppressed with
loneliness. She knew not how to speak the tongues of men, though
well she understood their significance. Only little children mated
rightly with her divine infancy; only the mute glories of nature
satisfied for a moment her brooding soul. The celestial impulses
within her beat their wings in futile longing for freedom, and with
inexpressible anguish she uttered her griefs aloud, or sung them to
such plaintive strains that all who heard wept in sympathy. Yet she
had no home.

After many days she came upon a broad, champaign, fertile land, where,
on a gentle knoll, among budding orchards, and fields green with
winter grains, stood a low, wide-eaved house, with gay parterres and
clipped hedges around it, all ordered with artistic harmony, while
over chimney and cornice crept wreaths of glossy ivy, every deep
green leaf veined with streaks of light, and its graceful sprays
clasping and clinging wherever they touched the chiselled stone
beneath. Upon the lawn opened a broad, low door, and the southern sun
streamed inward, showing the carved panels of the fireplace and its
red hearth, where heavy boughs of wood and splinters from the heart
of the pine lay ready for the hand of the Coming to kindle. Upon the
threshold, plucking out the dead leaves of the ivy, stood one from
whose face strength, and beauty, and guile that the guileless knew
not, shone sunlike upon Maya; and as she faltered and paused, he
spoke a welcome to her in her own language, and held toward her the
clasping hand of help. A thrill of mad joy cleft the heart of the
Princess, a glow of incarnate summer dyed with rose her cheek and lip,