'For men must work and women must weep, And the sooner 'tis over the sooner to sleep.'

In the long parlor, the leaf ghosts that had all day long been flitting in, were darkening with the sunset and filling the room with twilight dimness. Deep in a crimson couch and haloed with the last brightness, lay the long, white outlines of a reclining figure. A handful of Japan lilies burned against the pure drapery, and another handful of tea violets lay crushed in the fleecy handkerchief on the floor. Against the cushions the exquisite contour of the sleeping face showed plainly. Coolest quiet sphered the whole figure; not a suggestion of anything but slowest calm grace disturbed its repose. But with the hushing rustle of leaves with the summer murmur flowing in, seemed to come also the deep monotone of the waves, when this inanimate statue was striking out at his side through the rattle and rush of the surf, the wide eyes filled with fierce light, the whole face fixed and stern with the strain of heart muscle, toward the helpless shape shooting out on the undertow. He had not seen her after, and, coming to seek her that night with words of compliment and thanks, he was met by this white vision that had absorbed all the fire and force of the afternoon into its blankness.

A depot platform—long afternoon shadows fell over the pretty country station—standing alone in the woods. The small, temporary bustle about the waiting train was not discordant with the dreamy, restful look of the whole picture. Then the culminating hurry, the shriek and rattle of the starting train—a little figure poising itself for an instant on the car step—a face flushed a little, and dark eyes brightened with a flash of surprised recognition—a quick gesture of greeting and farewell, and then she was gone into the purple shades of evening.

Once again he had seen her, but from afar off, in the glare and heat of a crowded assembly room. The face was a little thinner now, and the eyes were looking farther away than ever. The blood-red light of rubies flashed in the soft lace at her throat and wrists, and dropped in glittering pendants against the slender neck. She was talking evidently of a brilliant bouquet of pomegranates and daphnes that lay in her lap, swinging dreamily the dainty, glittering white fan. And while he looked, she drew away the heavy brocade she wore, from under a careless tread—a slight, slow motion, wholly unlike the careless sweeps of other women. The imperious nature that thrilled her even to the tips of the long fingers, manifested itself, as inborn natures always do, under the deepest disguises, in just this unconscious, most trifling of acts; and, remembering the gesture, he asked, with words far lighter than the tone or feeling:

'As much of a princess as ever?'

And Captain George answered:

'As much of a princess!' both unmindful that no word had been spoken to token who was in the thought of each.

Very trifling things these were to remember. Very likely he had seen scores of far more graceful and memorable scenes; but just these trifles, coming back so vividly, proved to him, as nothing else could have done, with what a keen, intense sympathy every word and look of hers had been noted.

The spoken words roused him. In the ride that followed, twenty different persons and things came into their talk; but never once the princess. That, arousing himself again from his half-dreamful lapse from the old guarded habit, was put away steadily and quietly. His battle had been fought once. He was not to weaken his victory with fancies of the 'might have been.' He had not been tempted, through all these months; he would not tempt himself, now that real trial was so near at hand. Man as he was, if escape had been possible, he would have fled. But there was nothing to do but to go forward, and he called up that old, mighty, intangible safeguard of honor. The matter was settled beyond any question of surprise—he must avoid the long, sapping days of contact, the wasting, feverish yearnings of absence coming after.

Flying over miles and miles of the summer land, heaped with the red tangled sweets of clover fields, belted with white starry mayweed, blue with marshy growth of wild flag, with hazy lines of far-off hills, fading into purple depths of distance, and near low ones lying green and calm close beside them, with brown clear brooks, famous trout streams, after the New England fashion, went running across their way, the old home pride leaped up in George's eyes and voice, and even Moore forgot his weariness, and talked with a flash of the old, careless spirit.

The hack that brought them to their destination left them, deep in the summer night, at the foot of the long avenue of elms—going up which, with slow steps, on a sudden the house broke on them, ablaze with lights, athrob with music, whereat there was a renewal of explosive utterances, and the captain led his friend to the rear of the house to insure a quiet entrance.

From the dark piazza, where he waited while George summoned some one to receive them, he caught, through the long, open casement, the vista of the parlors, with their glitter and confusion of light drapery and glimpses of bright faces and light forms, and softened hum of voices, as the dancers circled with the music. And through it all, straight down toward him, floating in one of the weird Strauss waltzes, came the princess, swathed in something white, airy, wide-falling. The same dark, unflushed face, the same wide, far-looking eyes, and fixed mouth, the same silky falling hair, but cut short now, and floating back as she moved. It was only for a moment: the perfumed darkness that seemed to throb with a sudden life of its own, the great, slow, summer stars above him, the wailing, passionate music that came trembling out among the heavy dew-wet foliage, the dark, calm earth about him, and the light and color and giddy motion that filled the gleaming square before him, struck in on his senses with staggering force; and then she swayed out of his sight, and Mrs. Morris came forward with words of cheer and welcome.

That night, lying sleepless after the music was hushed and the wheels had done rolling away from the door, as if material enough for all fever fancies had not been given, backward and forward through the corridor a woman's garments trailed with light rustle, and a low voice hummed brokenly the waltz he had heard. Ceasing by and by in a murmur of girls' voices, and the old-remembered air, sung softly:

'For men must work and women must weep, Though storms be sudden and waters deep.'

After that many days went by unmarked. His wound, aggravated by fatigue, racked him with renewed pain; and when that was over, vitality was at too low an ebb for anything but the most passive quiet. Before listless, unnoting eyes drifted the crystal mornings, the golden hours steeped deep in summer languors, the miracles of sun-settings and star-filled holy nights. From his window he saw and heard always the ocean, blue and calm, lapping the shore with dreamy ripple in bright days—driving ghostly swirls of spray and fog clown the beach in stormy, gray ones. The house itself seemed set in the deepest haunt of summertime. Great trees, draped in the fullest growth of the year, rippled waves of green high about it. All day long the leaf sounds and leaf shadows came drifting in at the windows. Perfectest hush and quiet wrapped its occasional faint strains of music, or chime of voices came up to him, but did not break the silence. A place for a well soul to find its full stature, for a tired or sick one to gather again its lost forces. And by slow degrees the life held at first with so feeble a grasp came back to him.

By and by there came a day when, from his balcony, he witnessed a departure, full of girls' profuse adieux, and then the hush of vacancy fell on the wide halls and airy rooms of the great house. That evening, with slow steps, he came down the staircase. In the twilight of the parlors showed dimly outlined a drift of woman's drapery, and the piano was murmuring inarticulately. Outside, on the broad stone doorstep, showed another drift, resolving itself into the muslins of Miss Nelly Morris, springing up with glad words of welcome as his unsteady frame came into view. Before half the protracted and vehement hand shaking was over, Moore turned at a soft rustle behind him, and Nelly found her introduction forestalled. Moore hoped, with his courtliest reverence, that Miss Berkeley had not forgotten him.

She made two noiseless steps forward, and put out a small, brown band. He took it in his left, with a smiling glance of apology at the sling-fettered right arm. It was not often that Miss Berkeley's broad lids found it worth their while to raise themselves for such a wide, clear look as they allowed with the clasp. And then Nelly broke in:

'Then you two people know each other. Grand! And I've been wondering these two weeks what to do with you! Why didn't you tell me, Leu?'

'How was I to identify Mr. Moore with 'George's friend from the army'? Mr. Moore remembers he was on debatable ground last summer.'

Her soft, slow speech fell on his hearing like the silver ripple of water, clear and fine cut, but without a bit of the New England incisiveness of tone that filled his delicate Southern ear with slight, perpetual irritation.

'But I've made my calling and election sure at last. I was transformed into a mudsill and Northern hireling last spring.'

'In spite of the transformation, I recognized you as soon as you spoke. I was not quite willing to be forgotten, you see, by any one who wore the glorifying army cloth.'

They were out on the veranda now. Nelly was gazing with pitiful eyes at the sleeve fastened away, while the wasted left hand drew forward a great wicker chair into the circle of the moonlight. He caught the look:

'Not so very bad, Miss Nelly; not off, you see, only useless for the present;' and he took a lowly seat at her side, near the princess's feet.

'You are guiltless of shoulder straps. You might have obtained a commission, I think. Why didn't you, I wonder,' she said speculatively.

'Because I knew nothing of military matters, for one thing, and hadn't the assurance to take my first lesson as lieutenant or captain.'

Miss Berkeley's white lids lifted themselves again.

'More nice then wise, sir. Others do it,' was Nelly's comment.

'Yes, but I haven't forgotten the old copy-book instructions, 'Learn to obey before you command,' and began at the beginning. I've taken the first step toward the starred shoulder straps'—he wore the corporal's stripes—' and am hopeful.'

'You'll never attain to them, you lazy Southron. Tell as about your camp life.'

'There's very little to tell. Drill, smoke, loaf—begging your pardon for the rough expression of a rough fact—drill again. As one day is, so is another; they're all alike.'

'Well, tell us about your getting wounded, then, and the fight. George will not get wounded himself, in spite of my repeated requests to that effect.'

And so Moore fought his battle over again, in the midst of which Miss Berkeley dropped out of the talk, folded some soft brilliant net over her light dress, and went down the walk leading to the shore, and he did not see her again that night.

After that he spent much of his time below stairs. Much alone; there were walks and rides in which he could take no part. Despite of George's prediction, he had peace and quiet, and gathered strength hourly. Whatever of graciousness he had seen or fancied in Miss Berkeley's manner in that first unexpected meeting had all vanished. A subtile, unconquerable something shut her out from all friendliness of speech or action. She went about the house in her slow, abstracted way, or in her other mood, with sudden darting motions like a swallow, or dreamed all day beside the summer sea, coming back browner and with mistier looks in her gray eyes, but always alone and unapproachable. So that in half a dozen days he had not received as many voluntary sentences from her.

But one morning the clouds had gathered black and heavy. The sea fogs had pitched their tents to landward, and their misty battalions were driving gray across the landscape. Dim reaches of blank water—lay beyond, weltering with an uneasy, rocking motion against the low, dark sky. White, ghostly sea birds wheeled low, a fretful wind grieved about the house, and a New England northeast storm was in progress. She was standing at the window, looking out with eyes farther away than ever over the haze-draped sea. Some fine, heavy material, the same indistinct hue as the day outside, fell about her in large, sweeping folds. A breath of sudden, penetrating perfume struck across his senses as he approached her. 'And gray heliotrope!' he said; but the heliotrope vanished as she turned and displayed the blaze of carnations at her throat, and the gleam of crimson silk under the jaunty zouave.

'Lois Pearl Berkeley,' he read from the golden thimble he had nearly crushed under foot. He half wondered if she would know what it was. He never saw her do anything. She was never 'engaged,' nor in haste about any occupation. The perfect freedom from the universal Yankee necessity of motion, with which the brown, small hands fell before her, was as thoroughly a part of her as the strange Indian scent which clung to everything she touched, and sphered her like the atmosphere of another world. He never could associate the idea of any kind of personal care-taking with her dainty leisure, more than with the lilies of the field, though they never appeared in as many graceful arrays as she.

'Yes, mine, thank you,' she said, and composedly dropped it into its place in the most orderly of useless conglomerations of silken pockets and puzzling pigeon holes. He watched her fingers, and then looked back at her.

'Lois—such an odd name for you—such a quaint, staid Puritan name.'

'And I am neither quaint nor staid nor Puritan. Thank you. Yes, my mother must have had recollections of her New England home strong on her when she gave it me, down on the Louisiana shores. It always sounded even to me a little strange and frigid among such half-tropical surroundings.'

As she spoke a sudden pang of utter weariness and longing seized him. A rush of the boyish malady of homesickness, concentrated from all the dreary months of his long absence, and none the less poignant because it was involuntary. The wide, cool, shadowy halls of his mother's house, always aglow with blossoms and haunted with their odors, all the superficial lotus-charm of Southern life—and he had lived it superficially enough to catch all its poetry rose before him. It caught away his breath and choked sudden tears into his eyes. Came and went like a flash—for before she had done speaking a sudden new bond of sympathy put away the stranger forevermore, and he was no longer alone.

'Then you are Southern born too,' he said, with a quick step forward, and involuntarily outstretched hand. Hers dropped into it.

'Yes, I am hardly acclimated yet. I shiver under these pale Northern skies from August till June. O my Louisiana, you never made 'life a burden' with such dark, chill days, and sobbing, cruel winds!' She turned to the windows. A sudden uncontrollable quaver of impatience and longing ran through her speech and hurried the words with unusual vehemence.

'I thought you must have liked the day, since you robed yourself in its haze and mist.' He laid his hand lightly on her gray drapery with reverent touch.

'And I thought my carnations would redeem that. Since they didn't—'and she tossed the whole bright, spicy handful on the table.

In a vase on the mantle, gray, passionate, odorous blooms were massed loosely about a cluster of fragile, intense day lilies, and a dash of purple and crimson trailed with the fuchsias over its edge, and gleamed up from the white marble ledge. He went to the vase, shook out the fuchsias, and laid the residue in her lap.

'Heliotrope, finally,' he said.

She brushed it lightly away with a half shudder.

'Not that. I don't like heliotrope. Its perfume is heart-breaking, hopeless. It belongs in coffins, about still, dead faces. If it had a voice, we should hear continual moans. It would be no worse than this, though.'

'You will wear the lilies then, unless the heliotrope scent clings to them too,' he said, gathering up the obnoxious flowers.

'Yes, if it doesn't jar your ideal to see them worn against such a stormy day dress. To me they are the perfection of summer. No color could be more intense than this spotless whiteness. There!' Fastening them, the brittle stems snapped, and the flowers fell at her feet. 'No flowers for me to-day, of your choosing at least. Practically, lilies have such an uncomfortable way of breaking short off.'

A broad, bright ribbon lay drawn through 'Charles Anchester' on the table. She knotted it carelessly at her throat.

'That will do for the now; but, O my carnations, how your mission failed!' hovering over them a minute.

'Then you are not satisfied with the New England mean of perfection, in everything, mentally, morally, and meteorologically?' going back to the weather again.

'Satisfied! I'd exchange this whole pale summer for one hour of broad, torrid noonlight. Deep, far-off tropical skies, great fronds of tropical foliage, drawing their sustenance from the slowest, richest juices of nature, gorgeous depths of color blazing with the very heart of the sun, deep, intoxicating odors poured from creamy white or flaming flower chalices, and always the silver-sprayed wash of the blue sea. I remember that of my home. It is months and months since I have seen a magnolia or jasmine.'

Fate sent Miss Morris to the parlor just then, luckily enough, perhaps, and the first dash of rain from the coming storm struck the windows sharply. Miss Berkeley shivered; a gray shadow swept up over her face, and absorbed all the gleam and unrest. She moved off with her book to a window; shut herself out from the room, and into the storm, with a heavy fall of curtains; and Nelly's voice rippled through a tripping, Venetian barcarole.

It stormed all the next day, and when twilight came, it rained still with desperation. A narrow sphere of light from the flame low down in its alabaster shade held the piano, and through the warm scented gloom that filled the rest of the parlor thrilled echoing chords. Moore, coming in, stopped in the dimness to listen. A troubled uncertainty made itself felt through the strains, a sudden discordant crash jarred through the room, and the performer rose abruptly. He came forward.

'O my prophetic soul, magnolias!' said Nelly, from her lounge, just outside the lighted circle.

It had just come from him, the light, exquisite basket he held filled with great, pink, flushed magnolia blooms. Nelly raved in most fashionably extravagant adjectives. Lois looked at it with hungry eyes, but motionless and speechless. He laid it before her on the table, and turned away. She stood for a moment looking gravely down on it, then buried her face among the cool petals with a sudden caressing motion. Looking up again shortly, 'Thank you,' she said simply to the giver chatting carelessly.

A broad illumination flooded the other end of the parlor a minute after, and the chess board came into requisition. If Miss Morris found little skill necessary to discomfit her opponent, and wondered thereat, she could not see, as he saw, a dark face, bowed on tropic blooms, flushed with unwonted glad color, lips apart and aquiver, wide eyes lustrous with purple light, shining through the tears that gathered in them.

Then the piano began, played dreamily, irregularly, with slender, single threads of tune, and frequent pauses, as if the preoccupied mind let the listless fingers fall away from the keys. They gathered up finally all the broken strains into a low, slow-moving harmony. Through it Moore heard the soft lap of waves, the slow rock of Pacific tidal swells, flowing and ebbing and flowing again through flaming noons, about half-submerged bits of world, palm-shaded, sun-drenched, or swaying white with moonlight under purple midnights, holy with the clear burning stars: heard the gurgle and ripple of falling streams, deepening into the wide flow of mighty rivers, bearing in their calm sweep the secrets of a zone—of ice-choked springs, of the dead stillness of Northern forests, and the overgrowth, and passionate life of endless summers.

The red and white combatants now held truce over a queen check, while the players sat silent, listening.

Suddenly, through the murmur and rhythmic flow of water sounds, struck shrill and sharp the opening strains of a march—not such marches as mark time for dainty figures crowding ballroom floors, but triumphant, cruel, proud, with throbbing drum-beat—steadying the tramp of weary feet over red battle fields. Its unswerving hurry, its terrible, calm excitement, brought before his vision long blue lines—the fixed faces sterner than death, with steady eyes and quickened breath—the nervous clutch of muskets, as the rattle of small arms and boom of cannon came nearer and nearer, the fluttering silken banners, the calm sunshine, and sweet May breath—and the quick, questioning note of a meadow lark dropped down through the silence of the advancing column. As the maddening music stormed and beat about him, his heart throbbed audibly, and the rushing currents of his fiery Southern blood sounded in his ears. Honor, prudence, resolution, everything was swept away in the lava tide of excitement. Before him he saw the crown of his life. All heaven and all earth should not stop him short of it. He rose and began crossing the room, with heavy, resolute tread. In the dimness, the player was hardly visible; he would assure himself of her mortality at least. A sudden, fierce hunger for sight and touch thrilled him.

Midway he stopped. The music dropped with a shock from its fiery enthusiasm. Was it only an echo, or an army of ghosts crossing a dim field, long since fought over—the steady tramp, tramp, the pendulum of time? Unutterably wailing, pitiful, it sent plaintive, piercing cries up to the calm, dead heavens. All the fearful sights he had seen rose before him. Upturned lay faces calm in death as in a child's sleep, with all camp roughnesses swept away in that still whiteness; strong men's, with that terrible scowl of battle or the distortion of agonized death on them—mangled and crushed forms—all the wreck of a fought battle, terrible in its suggestive pathos. It sank away into the minor of water voices, soft, monotonous, agonizing in its utter passivity, a brilliant arpeggio flashed up the keys like a shower of gold, and Miss Berkeley rose with white face and trembling breath, and Nelly was alone in the room, sobbing nervously in her armchair.

The storm passed that night, with great swayings of trees, and dash of broad raindrops, and piled up broken masses of fleecy white clouds, tossed about by the rough, exultant September wind. Bright days followed, mellowing with each one to sunnier, calmer perfection. Moore passed them in his own room. That night had torn away all the disguises that he had put upon his heart. He knew now that he loved this woman—knew it with such a bitter sense of humiliation as such proud spirits writhe under when honor turns traitor and betrays them to the enemy. 'Lead us not into temptation.' If it meant anything in the old habit of child's prayer which clung to him yet, it meant that he should put himself out of its way, since he had proved himself too weak to meet it. His inborn honesty let him build no excuses for his failure. He saw, and acknowledged with a flush of scorn and curling lip, his own treachery to himself in his hour of need. That he had not committed himself—that his self-betrayal was only known to self—was no merit of his—simply a circumstance. And circumstances seemed mighty in their influence upon him, he thought, with a feeling of deepest contempt. All pride and self-reliance were taken out of him. Absence, at least, would be a safeguard, since it would render harmless such impulses as those of that night. However much he might sin in yearning, she; should never know, never be exposed to the risk of being drawn into his guilt and pain. He had come at last to the place where all the old delicate pride was merged in the one anxious fear that she should suffer. He would go away the next day; he would not see her again—never see her voluntarily—putting away fiercely the sudden pang of yearning: not that he came at once to such a conclusion.

Honor, pride, self-respect, having failed him once, were not easily recalled to their allegiance. His was no feeble nature, to sin and repent in an hour. He fought over every inch of his way, and came out at last conqueror, but scarred and weary and very weak in heart, and distrustful of himself.

They had gone to ride that afternoon—he had seen them drive away. He would go down and make the necessary arrangements for his departure. And so it happened that he stood an hour before sunset in the parlor. A sudden heart sickness drove the blood from his lips with the wrench of remembrance. It did not strengthen him to meet her, cool and royal, in filmy purple, putting out her hand with frank friendliness, and with a new quaver of interest in her voice. Those fatal magnolias: all the outside world seemed pressing nearer these two strangers in a strange land.

'How pale you are! You have been ill again.'

'No,' he said, almost harshly. 'You like tiger lilies,' lifting a stem crowded with the flaming whirls.

'Like them? yes—don't you? As I like the fiery, deafening drum-roll and screaming fife, and silver, sweet bugle-calls. Think where they found these wide, free curves of outline—that flaming contrast of color. Indian skies have rounded over them, Indian suns poured their fervor into their hearts. In the depth of forest jungles the velvet-coated tiger has shaken off their petals—glittering, deadly cobras crushed them in their slow coils; gorgeous-winged birds and insects swept them in their flight.'

Some new mental impulse sent a rare, faint flush to the olive cheeks, and filled the uplooking clear eyes with light. This purple-clad shape, with fiery nasturtiums burning on the breast and filling the air with their peculiar odor, with the barbaric splendor of tiger lilies reflecting their lurid glare about her as she stood, bore no more likeness to the ordinary haughty woman than fire to snow. He would have liked to have crowned her with pomegranate blossoms—have dropped the silvery sheen of ermine under her feet, and have knelt there to worship.

She moved away impatiently, trailed her noiseless drapery through the room once or twice, and came back to the window, where he stood looking out. Before them lay the sea, calm in a sheen of blue, gathering faint amethystine vapors, that the sunset would light up in a miracle of bronze and purple and rose.

'You should have been with us last night! A soft, rushing south wind filled all the air with whispers, and drew up a veil of lace round the horizon, very high up in the east. Stars were few; the new moon dropped tender, faint beams down into the gray mist and grayer water that broke in ripples of white fire against the dark in the west, and mingled with the mystery in the east. I want to go again. Mr. Moore, I can manage a boat; will you go with me?'

With every minute he saw his hard-earned victory slipping away. With every minute his reeling sense lost foothold in the strange, new fascination of her excited presence. Will rallied to a last effort; he muttered some broken excuse, that she must have thought an assent, for she dropped a soft, white, clinging shawl over her shoulders, slipped the tie of the jaunty hat beneath her chin, and he could only follow her as she slid through the flicker of shade and sunshine down to the beach, where the summer sea washed lazily.

Low in the west and northwest lay piled ominous clouds; white, angry thunder heads began showing themselves.

'A grand sunset for to-night, and a shower perhaps. We shall be back before it breaks.'

A small boat—a frail thing of white and gilding—floated at anchor. Lois shook out the sail in her character of manager, seated herself at the helm, and they drifted out. No word was spoken; the light in her eyes grew brighter and brighter; the scarlet curves of her mouth more and more intense. Sitting with face turned away from the west, she did not see, as he did, the rising blackness. The wind freshened, skimming in fitful gusts over the waves, and the little craft flung off the spray like rain. Away off in the shadow of the cloud the water was black as death, a faint line of white defining its edge. Was she infatuated? As for him, he grew very calm, with a kind of desperation. Better to die so, with her face the last sight on earth—his last consciousness her clinging arms, sinking down to the dark, still caverns beneath—than to live out the life that lay before him. He leaned forward and looked over into the green depths of the sea. Sunshine still struck down in rippling lines, a golden network. Soft emerald shadows hung far down, breaking up into surface rifts of cool dimness as the waves swung over them.

Her hat had fallen back; her whole face was alive with a proud, exultant delight in the exhilarating motion. Higher and higher rose the veil of cloud, and the blackness in the water was creeping toward them. Sea birds wheeled low about them, with their peculiar quavering cry, and a low swell made itself felt. Miss Berkeley turned her head; a sudden look of affright blanched her face to deadliest whiteness. A hand's breadth of clear sky lay beneath the sun, and down after them, with the speed of a racer, came that great black wave. Before it the blue ripples shivered brightly; behind it the angry water tossed and seethed. In its bosom, lurid, phosphorescent lights seemed to flit to and fro. Its crest was ragged and white with dashes of foam. She took in the whole in a second's glance, and made a movement to bring the boat's head up to the wind. As the white face turned toward him, a quick instinct of self-preservation seized him, and he sprang up to lower the sail. Something caught the halliards. His left arm was of little service; his right hung useless at his side. She reached forward—one hand on the tiller—to help him. The rim of the storm slipped up over the sun—a sudden flaw struck them—the rudder flew sharp round, wrenched out of her slight hold—the top-heavy sail caught the full force of the blow, surged downward with a heavy lurch, and the gale was on them. A great blow, and swift darkness, then fierce currents rushing coldly past him; strange, wild sounds filling his ears; and when his vision cleared itself, he saw Lois, unimpeded by her light drapery, striking out for the sunken ledge, half a dozen yards away, over which the spray was flying furiously. He ground his teeth with impatience as his nerveless arm fell helpless; but he reached her side at last. A narrow shelf, with barely sufficient standing room for two. Great, dark waves, with strange lights flashing through them, whirled blinding deluges high above their heads, as he held her close. With the instinct of the weaker toward the stronger, she grasped and clung to him; and the fierce exultation that thrilled through his veins with actual contact, made him strong as a giant. And then, close on the gale, came the rain, beating down the waves with its heavy pour. In the thunder and tramp of the storm no human voice could have made itself audible, if speech had been needed.

The storm passed as suddenly as it had risen. Through a rift in the clouds a dash of blood-red light burst over the troubled waters, and with it a sudden quiet fell about them. They were to have their 'grand sunset' finally.

'We are too far from the mainland to reach it without help; no boats are likely to pass this way after this storm; the tide is at its lowest now; it rises high over this ledge.'

In his quiet voice a half-savage triumph made itself heard. This near-coming fate, that he believed inevitable, put away completely all claims of that world that lay behind him—shut out everything but their own individuality. Time had narrowed to a point; all landmarks were swept away.

Miss Berkeley's face had lost none of its whiteness; but the pallor was not of fear. The great eyes burned star-like, and the mouth was like iron. She looked up as his even tones fell on her ear. Something in his gaze fixed hers; through fearless, unveiled eyes, the soul looked straight out to his. What he saw there dazzled and blinded him. He caught her up to his heart suddenly and fiercely. His lips crushed hers in a long, clinging kiss, that seemed to drink up her very life. For them, the brightness that for others is dissipated over long years of the future, was concentrated into the single intense moment of the present—this one moment, that seemed to burst into bud and blossom, the fruition of a lifetime. The sky lifted away and poured down fuller floods of light; the air vibrated with strange, audible throbs. When he released her, she did not move away. Never again, though they lived out a century, could the past be quite what it had been before; through it they had come to this, the crowning perfection of their lives. Through the future would run the memory of a caress in which—she was not a woman who measured her gifts—she had dissolved all the hope and promise of that future for him. Desperation was no small element in the whirl. Only into the eternities could he carry the now pure and loyal. It had nothing to do with time; only through the shadow of the coming death had he attained to it.

The fancy that had always haunted him with her peculiar name and dainty presence, prompted the 'Marguerite!'

She was not a woman to whom people give pet names. A rested, loving smile gleamed over her face, and her lips sought his again.

'My darling!'

'Mine!' and then time drifted on, unbroken by the speech which would have jarred the new, perfect harmony. Neither thought—the life currents that had met so wildly and suddenly, left space in their full, disturbed flow, for just the one consciousness of delirious, satisfying love. While the fiery sunset paled, he held the little drenched figure close, her warm breath flowing across his cheek.

Out of the gathering dimness shoreward, came a hail. It struck him with an icy chill that death could never have brought. She raised her head, listening. The longing and temptation to hold her to his breast, and sink down through the green, curling waves, came back stronger than ever. Only so could he hope to keep her. That inexorable future of time reaching out to grasp him back again, would put them apart so hopelessly. His voice was hoarse—broken up with the heart wrench.

'Marguerite, will you die here with me, or go back again to the life that will separate us?'

She did not understand him. Why should she? Did she not love him, and he her? and what could come between them? For her a future burst suddenly into hope with that faint call. In it lay untried, unfathomable sources of happiness.

Another breathless kiss—this time crowded with the agony of a parting for him—and then, as the hail came again, nearer and more distinct, the white shawl, that still clung about her, floated in the air as a signal.

They lifted her into the rescuing boat shortly, white and breathless, and wrapped her in heavy shawls. Not senseless, lying against his breast, the dark eyes opened once to meet his, and the pallid face nestled a little closer to its resting place. He could not tell if the time were long or short, before Nelly's voice broke on his ear.

'Only a comedy, instead of the tragedy which mother is arranging up at the house!'

The half-hysterical quaver broke into the woman's refuge of tears, and sobs with that; and Moore gave up his burden to stronger arms.

'Up at the house,' Mrs. Morris, busied with her blazing fires and multitudinous appliances for any stage of disaster, met them with the quiet tears that mothers learn to shed, and the reverent 'Thank God!' that comes oftenest from mothers' lips.

And the bustle being over, he looked reality and duty straight in the face. The man was in no sense a coward—flinch was not in him. He came out on the upper balcony two hours later, with the face of a man over whom ten years more of life had gone heavily. A dozen steps away sat Marguerite—the white heart of a softened glow of light. She came out at his call quiet and stately, but with a kind of shy happiness touching eye and cheek with light and flame. At sight of her, all the mad passion in his heart leaped up—a groan came in place of the words he had promised himself. He strode away with heavy, hard footfalls. Not strange, since he was trampling Satan and his own heart under his feet. He came back again, quickly, eagerly, as a man forcing himself forward to a mortal sacrifice, who feels that resolution may fail. The words that came finally were half a groan, half an imprecation, hissed through clenched teeth.

'Three years ago, a Louisiana lady promised to be my wife. She is not dead; the engagement is not broken.'

There were no words beyond the plain statement of facts that he had any right to use—harsh and brutal though they seemed. Seen in the earth-light that had broken on him with that rescuing hail, he had acted the coward and villain. If she thought him so, he had no right to demur.

There was no need of other words. The eyes, after their first terrified glance, had fixed themselves out on the night, and then the lids fell, and the wondering, stunned look changed slowly into one of perfect comprehension. Not a muscle moved. The present, leaping forward, laid before her the future, scorched and seared, beyond possibility of bloom again. She looked into it with just the same attitude—even to the tapering fingers laid lightly on the railing—as five minutes before she had dreamed over a land of promise. He, looking down on her white face—whiter in the silver powder of the moonlight—saw a look of utter, hopeless quiet settle there—such quiet as one sees in an unclosed coffin, such marble, impassive calm, neither reproachful nor grieving, as covers deadly wounds—settle never again to rise till Death shall sweep it off. Some lives are stamped at once and forever; and faces gather in an hour the look that haunts them for a lifetime.

Then he knew that no one ever bears the consequences of a sin alone. On this woman, for whom he would have gone to death, he had drawn down the curse. He was powerless to help her; all that he could give—the promise of lifelong love and tenderness—was itself a deadly wrong—would blast his life in giving, hers in receiving. In the minutes that he stood there, gazing into her face, all the waves and billows of bitterest realization of helplessness went over his heart.

She turned to go away. 'Marguerite!' The man's despairing soul, his bitter struggles and failures, atoned for in this last agony, made itself utterance in that one cry. She turned back, without looking up; even his eager gaze could not force up the heavy lids. Then, with that sweet, miraculous woman's grace of patience and pity, she put out her hand, and as he bowed his head over it, touched her lips to his cheek with quick, light contact, and glided away.

Earliest morning shimmered lances of gray, ghostly light on the horizon, and across the sea to the waiting shore. They struck grayest and ghostliest on a high balcony, where a woman's figure crouched, swathed in damp, trailing drapery, with silky, falling hair about a still face, and steadfast eyes that had burned just as steadfastly through the long hours gone by. Great, calm stars, circling slowly, had slipped out of sight into the waves; the restless, grieving ocean had swayed all night with heavy beat against the beach; mysterious whisperings had stirred the broad summer leaves, heavy with dew and moonlight; faint night noises had drifted up to her, leaving the silence unrippled by an echo; till the old moon dropped a wasted, blood-red crescent out of sight, and the world, exhausted with the passion of the yearning night, shrouded itself in the gloom and quiet that comes before the dawn.

To the watcher, who, with strained, unconscious attention, had taken in every change of the night, the promise of the day came almost as a personal wrong. That the glare of the sunshine should fall on her pain—that the necessity for meeting mere acquaintances with the same face as yesterday should exist, now that her life lay so scorched and sere before her, filled her with rebellious impatience.

But when, with the growing light, the first sounds of household waking came to her, she rose wearily, and went, with tired, heavy steps to her own room. And Nelly, coming in half an hour later, with an indefinite sense of uneasiness, found an older face than last evening's on the pillow, with harder lines about the mouth, and with a wearier droop of the eyelids. The voice, too, that answered her good morning, had a kind of echoing dreariness in it. But such traces are not patent to many eyes or ears, and Nelly did not realize them.

There are a few women, mostly of this dark, slender type, who bear these wrenching heart agonies as some animals bear extremest suffering of body—not a sound or struggle testifies to pain—receiving blow after blow without hope or thought of appeal—going off by and by to die, or to suffer back to life alone. Not much merit in it, perhaps—a passive, hopeless endurance of an inevitable torture; but such tortures warp or shape a lifetime. Rarely ever eyes that have watched out such a night see the sun rise with its old promise.

Clement Moore, coming slowly back to life after a fortnight of delirium, found the woods ablaze with October, and Miss Berkeley gone. Another fortnight, and he was with his regiment. Captain George—off on some scouting expedition—was not in camp to meet him. But stretched out on the dry turf a night or two after, through the clash of the band on the hillside above broke Captain George's sonorous voice, and straightway followed such a catalogue of questions as dwellers in camps have always ready to propound to the latest comer from the northward. Concluding finally with—

'And you didn't fall in love with 'the princess'?' Poor Captain George! The prodigious effort ought to have kept the heart throb out of his voice, though it didn't. Moore's quick ear caught it (sympathy has a wonderfully quickening effect on the perceptions sometimes), and he took refuge in a truth that in no way touched the past few months—feeling like a coward and traitor meanwhile, and yet utterly helpless to save either himself or his friend from coming evil. Another item added to retributive justice.

'I thought you knew'—flashing the diamond on his hand in the moonlight—'somewhere beyond the lines yonder a lady wears the companion to this—or did, last spring.'

And George's spirits rose immensely thereupon.

The old, miserable monotony of camp life began again. It wore on him, this machine-like existence, this blind, unquestioning obedience, days and nights of purposeless waiting, brightened by neither hope nor memory. He had hated it before; now he loathed it with the whole strength of his unrestful soul. But it did him good. Brought face to face with his life, he met the chances of his future like the man he was, and at last, out of the blackness end desolation, came the comfort of conquering small, every-day temptations, more of a comfort than we are willing to admit at first thought.

This bare, unbroken life cuts straight down to the marrow of a man. Stripped of all conventionalities, individuals come out broadly. The true metal shows itself grandly in this strange, impartial throwing together of social elements—this commingling on one level of all ranks and conditions of men in the same broad glare of every-day trial, unmodified by any of society's false lights. The factitious barriers of rank once broken over, all early associations, whether of workshop or college, go for nought, or, rather, for what they are worth. The man gravitates to his proper place, whether he makes himself known with the polished sentences of the school, or in terse, sinewy, workman's talk. And through the months Moore learned to respect humanity as it showed itself, made gentler to every one, driven out from himself, perhaps, by the bitterness and darkness that centred in his own heart. It was a new phase of life for him, but he bated his haughty Southern exclusiveness to meet it. Before, he had kept himself aloof as far as the surroundings allowed from those about him—now, his never-failing good nature, his flow of song and story, his untiring physical endurance, all upborne by a certain proud delicacy and reticence, made him a general favorite. But he hailed as a relief the long, exhausting marches that came after a while. Bodily weariness stood in the place of head or heart exercise, and men falling asleep on the spot where they halted for the night, after a day in the clinging Virginia mud, had little time for the noisy outbreaks that filled the evenings in days of inaction. So he did his private's duty bravely, with cheery patience, relieving many a slender boy's arms of his gun, helping many another with words of cheer as he slumped on at his side, always with some device for making their dreary night-stops more endurable. Thanksgiving came and went. George went home on furlough. Moore refused one, and ate the day's extra allowance of tough beef and insipid rice with much fought-against memories of his New England festivals. The winter went on. Christmas days came. The man's brown face was getting positively thinner with homesick recollections of the Southern carnival. This brilliant, ready spirit, who never grew sour nor selfish under any circumstances, actually spent two good hours, the afternoon before Christmas day, in a brown study, and with a suspicious, tightened feeling in his throat, and mistiness in his eyes. Coming in at nightfall from his picket duty, tired and hungry, Jim Murphy, stretching his long length before the fire, rose on his elbow to find half a dozen epistles he had brought down to camp that day.

'Yer letthers, Musther Moore.' Jim, even with his sudden accession of independence as an American citizen, paid unconscious deference to the world-old subtile difference between gentleman and 'rough,' and used the title involuntarily.

He opened them sitting by the same fire, munching his hard tack as he read. Murphy, watching him, saw his lips quiver and work over one bearing half a dozen postmarks—a letter from his mother, conveyed across the lines by some sleight-of-hand of influence or pay, and mailed and remailed from place to place, till weeks had grown into months since it was written. Noncommittal as it had need to be—filled with home items to the last page—there his heart stood still, to bound again furiously back, and his breath came sharp and hot. He rose blinded and staggering. Jim Murphy, seeing how white and rigid his face had grown, came toward him, putting out his hand with a dumb impulse of sympathy, not understanding how the shock of a great hope, springing full grown into existence, sometimes puts on the semblance of as great a loss.

Private Moore's application for a furlough being duly made, that night was duly granted.

'Just in time—the last one for your regiment!' said the good-natured official, registering the necessary items.

In another hour he was whirling away, and in early evening two days later he stepped out into the clear moonlight and crisp air of a Northern city.

A New England sleighing season was at its height. The streets were crowded with swift-flying graceful vehicles, the air ringing with bell music and chimes of voices. Out through the brilliant confusion he went to the quiet square where the great trees laid a dark tracery of shadow upon the snow beneath. No thought of the accidents of absence or company, or any of the chances of everyday life, had occurred to him before. A carriage stood at the door. He almost stamped with impatience till the door opened and he was admitted. The change to the warm, luxurious gloom of the parlors quieted him a little, but he paced up and down with long strides while he waited. The strong stillness that he had resolutely maintained was broken down now with a feverish restlessness.

She came at length—it seemed to him forever first—with the rustle and shimmer of trailing lengths of silk down the long room. A fleecy mist covered neck and arms, and some miracle of a carriage wrapping lay white and soft about her face. She did not recognize him in the obscurity; his message of 'a friend' had not betrayed him. But his voice, with its new, proud hopefulness, its under vein triumphant and eager, struck her into a blinding, giddy whirl, in which voice and words were lost. It passed in a moment, and he was saying, 'And I am free now—honorably free—and have come where my heart has been, ever since that month on the seaside. Most gracious and sovereign lady,'—he broke into sudden, almost mirthful speech, dropping on one knee with a semblance of humility proved no mockery by the diamond light in the brown eyes and the reverent throb that came straight from his voice.

She bent over him as he knelt, and drew her cool, soft hands across his forehead and down his face, and her even, silvery syllables cut like death:

'Mr. Moore, last night I promised to marry your friend, Captain Morris.'

For the space of a minute stillness like the grave filled the room, and then all the intense strain of heart and nerve gave way, as the bitter tide of disappointment broke in and rolled over his future; and without word or sound he dropped forward at her feet.

She knelt down beside him with a low, bitter cry. It reached his dulled sense; he rose feebly.

'Forgive me; I have not been myself of late, I think; and this—this was so sudden,' and he walked away with dull, nerveless tread.

On the table, near her, lay her handkerchief. It breathed of heliotrope. Her words came back to him: 'Only in coffins, about still, dead faces.' He stopped in his walk and looked down on her. Forever he should remember all that ghostly sheen of silvery white about a rigid face with unutterably sad fixed mouth and drooping lids. He thrust the fleecy handful into his breast.

'I may keep this?' and took permission from her silence.

'Good-by;' the words came through ashy lips, a half sob. She knelt as impassive as marble, as cold and white. He waited a moment for the word or look that did not come, turned away, the hall door fell heavily shut, and he was gone.

Fifteen minutes after, Miss Berkeley was whirling to the house where she was to officiate as bridesmaid, and where she was haughtier, and colder, and ten times more attractive than ever.

Private Moore, waiting for the midnight return train, found life a grim prospect.

Three weeks after, a summons came from the captain's tent. George had just returned from his own furlough, and this was their first meeting. Even while their hands clasped, his new, happy secret told itself.

'Congratulate me, Clement Moore! You remember Lois Berkeley? She has promised to be Lois Berkeley Morris one day!' and, with happy lover's egotism, did not notice the gray shade about his hearer's lips.

Various items of news followed.

'A truce boat goes over to-morrow,' remembering the fact suddenly; 'there will be opportunity to send a few letters; so, if you wish to write to that lady 'beyond the lines'—

The voice that replied was thin and harsh:

'Miss Rose declined alliance with a 'Yankee hireling,' and was married last October.'

Honest George wrung his friend's hand anew, and heaped mental anathemas on his own stupidity for not seeing how haggard and worn the dark face had grown—anathemas which were just enough, perhaps, only he hardly saw the reason in quite the right light. But he spared all allusions to his own prospects thereafter, and finding that Moore rather avoided than sought him, measured and forgave the supposed cause by his own heart.

At length came a time when a new life and impulse roused into action even that slowly moved great body, the officers of the Potomac Army, and that much-abused and sorely tried insignificant item, the army itself. On every camp ground reigned the confusion of a flitting. All the roads were filled with regiments hurrying southward, faces growing more and more hazard with fatigue and privation, weak and slender forms falling from the ranks, cowards and traitors skulking to the rear, till at length on the banks of the river stood an army, hungry, footsore, marchworn, but plucky, and ready for any service that might be required of them, even if that service were but to 'march up the hill and then march down again'—what was left of them.

An atom in the moving mass of blue, Clement Moore shared the pontoon crossing, was silent through the storms of cheers that greeted each regiment as they splashed over and up the bank, and, drawn up in line of battle at last, surveyed the field without a pulsation of emotion. Other men about him chafed at the restraint; he stood motionless, with eyes a thousand miles away. And when the advance sounded, and the line started with a cheer, no sound passed his lips. A half-unconscious prayer went up that he might fall there, and have it over with this life battle, that had gone so sorely against him. He moved as in a dream. The whirl and roar of battle swept around and by him; he charged with the fiercest, saw the blue lines reel and break only to close up and charge again, took his life in his hand a dozen times, and stood at length with the few who held that first line of rifle pits, gazing in each other's faces in the momentary lull, and wondering at their own existence. Then came a shock, shivers of red-hot pain ran through every nerve, and then—blissful, cool unconsciousness. Captain George, galloping by, with the red glare of battle on his face, saw the fall, and halted. A half dozen ready hands swung the body to his saddle. For a little the tide of battle eddied away, and in the comparative quiet, George tore down the hill to a spring bubbling out under the cedars.

The darkness that wrapped the wounded man dissolved gradually. The thunder and crash of guns, the mad cheers, the confusion of the bands withdrew farther and farther, and drifted away from his failing senses. He was back in his Southern home; the arm under his head was his mother's; and he murmured some boyish request. Jasmine and clematis oppressed him with their oversweetness; overhead the shining leaves of the magnolia swung with slow grace. So long since he had seen a magnolia, not since that evening—a life time ago, it seemed; the sight and fragrance fell on him as her cool touch did that last time. The heart throbs choked him then; he was choking again. 'Water, mother—a drink!' and something wet his lips and trickled down his throat, not cool and sweet as the rippling water he longed for, and he turned away with sickly fretfulness; but a new strength thrilled through his limbs. He opened his eyes; a face, battle-stained, but tear-wet like a woman's, bent over him.

'O Clement, dear old fellow, do you know me?'

He smiled faintly, with stiffening lips. 'Yes, I know. I've prayed for it, George. I couldn't live to see her your wife. Good-by, dear boy. Tell mother—' He wandered again. 'Kiss me, mother—now Lois, my Marguerite. Into thy hands, O Lord—' A momentary struggle for breath, and then Morris laid back the grand head, and knelt, looking down on the beautiful face, over which the patient strength of perfect calm had settled forever.

'So that was it, after all,' he said, bitterly. 'Fool not to see; and he was worth a generation of such as I.'

He turned away, tightened his saddle girths, cast a look on the pandemonium before him, looked back with one foot already in the stirrup.

'I sha'n't see him again in this hell, even if I come out of it myself.' And going back, with gentle fingers he removed the few trinkets on the body. In an inner pocket of the blouse he found a small packet. He opened it on the spot. A lady's handkerchief, silky fine, white as ever. No need of the delicate tracery in the corners to tell him whose. The perfume that haunted it still called back too vividly that evening when he had wondered at and loved her more for the strange, perfect calm that chilled a little his outburst of happiness. He folded it back carefully, touched his lips as a woman might have done to the cold forehead, and mounted, plunging up the hill to the fight that had recommenced over the trench. Later in the day, the ball that fate moulded for Captain George found him. He gave one low, pitiful cry as it crashed through his bridle arm, and then a merciful darkness closed about him.

Two months after, white and thin, with one empty sleeve fastened across his chest, he stood where another had stood waiting for the same woman. Through the window drifted in the early spring fragrance; a handful of early spring flowers lay on the table. A soft rustle and slow step through the hall, and he rose as Lois came in. She glanced at the empty sleeve with grave, wide eyes, and sat down near him. He would not have known the face before him, it had so altered; the hair pushed back from hollow, blue-veined temples, the sharpened, angular outlines, and an old, suffering look about the mouth and sunken eyes.

Few words were spoken—nothing beyond the most commonplace greetings. Then she said:

'I should have come to you, but I have been ill myself; near death, I believe,' she added, wearily.

She gave the explanation with no throb of feeling. She would have apologized for a careless dress with more spirit once.

He rose and laid a packet before her.

'A lady's handkerchief—yours, I think. I was with him when he died, though his body was not found afterward. I was hurt myself, you know, and could not attend to it,' he said, deprecatingly.

She did not touch it, looking from it up to him with eyes filled with just such a grieved, questioning look as might come into the eyes of some animal dying in torture. He could not endure it. He put out his white, wasted left hand.

'My poor child!' She shivered, caught her breath with a sob, and, burying her face in the pillows of a couch, gave way to her first tears in an agony of weeping. And he sat apart, not daring to touch her, nor to speak—wishing, with unavailing bitterness, that it had been he who was left lying stark and still beneath the cedars.

The storm passed. She lay quiet now, all but the sobs that shook her whole slight frame. He said, at last, very gently:

'If I had known—you should have told me. He was my best friend.' His voice trembled a little. 'I know how I must seem to you. His murderer, perhaps; surely the murderer of your happiness.' A deeper quaver in the sorrowful tones. 'It is too late now, I know; but if it would help you ever so little to be released from your promise—'

There was no reply.

'You are free. I am going now.' He bent over her for a breath, making a heart picture of the tired face, the closed eyes, and grieved mouth. Only to take her up for a moment, with power to comfort her—he would have given his life for that—and turned away with a great, yearning pain snatching at his breath. In the hall he paused a moment, trying to think. A light step, a frail hand on his arm, a wistful face lifted to his.

'Forgive me; I have been very unkind. You are so good and noble. I will be your wife, if you will be any happier.'

He looked down at her pityingly. 'You are very tired. Shall you say that when you are rested again? Remember, you are free.'

'If not yours, then never any one's.'

His arm fell about her, his lips touched her forehead quietly; he led her back to her couch, and arranged her pillow, smiling a little at his one awkward hand.

'I shall not see you again before I go back, unless you send for me.'

She put out her hand and touched the bowed face quickly and lightly; and with that touch thrilling in his veins he went away.

Through Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and the Charleston siege, Captain George, no longer captain, now twice promoted for cool bravery, has borne a charmed life—a grave, calm man, remembering always a still face, 'pathetic with dying.'

Out from the future is turned toward him another face, no less pathetic in its unrest of living. The soldiers in the Capital hospitals, dragging through the weary weeks of convalescence, know that face well. For hours of every day she goes about busied with such voluntary service as she is permitted to do. She sees tired faces brighten at her coming—is welcomed by rough and gentle voices. Always patient, ready, thoughtful, she is 'spending' herself—waiting for the end.



THE SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE: ITS CHARACTER AND RELATION TO OTHER LANGUAGES.

ARTICLE TWO.

CORRESPONDING FIRST DISCRIMINATIONS IN THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE.

The purpose of these papers, as announced and partially carried forward in the preceding one, is to explain the nature of the NEW SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE, a component part of the new Science of UNIVERSOLOGY, and to exhibit its relation to the Lingual Structures hitherto extant. For this purpose we entered upon the necessary preliminary consideration of the fundamental question of the Origin of Speech. We found that the latest developments of Comparative Philology upon this subject, as embodied in Prof. Mueller's recent work, 'Lectures on the Science of Language,' brought us no farther along to the goal of our investigation than Compound Roots—one-, two-, three-, four-, five—(or more) letter Roots—some four or five hundred of which are the insoluble residuum which the Philologists furnish as the Ultimate Elements of Language. It was pointed out that these Roots are not, however, the Ultimate Elements of Language, any more than Compound Substances are the Prime Constituents of Matter; and that, as Chemistry, as a Science, could begin its career, only after a knowledge of the veritable Ultimate Elements of the Physical Constitution of the Globe was obtained, so a True Science of Language must be based upon an understanding of the value and meaning of the True Prime or Ultimate Elements of Speech—the Vowels and Consonants.

It is with the exposition of the nature of these Fundamental Constituents of Language, and of their Correspondential Relationship or Analogy with the Fundamental Constituents of Thought, the Ultimate Rational Conceptions of the Mind, that the New UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE begins its developments. Through its agency we may hope to find, therefore, a satisfactory solution to the problem of the Origin of Speech, which Comparative Philology abandons at the critical point, and so to be able to pass to the consideration of the more specific objects of our present inquiry.

* * * * *

UNIVERSOLOGY establishes the fact that there is Analogy or Repetition of Plan throughout the various Departments of the Universe. It demonstrates, in other words, that the same Principles which generate, and the same Laws which regulate, the Phenomena of the Universe as a whole, fulfil the same functions in connection with the Phenomena of every one of its parts. The Mathematical, Psychological, or any other specific Domain is, therefore, an expression or embodiment of the same System of Principles and Laws, with reference to both Generals and Details, which is otherwise exhibited in Mechanics, Physics, Chemistry, and elsewhere universally; just as the same Architectural Plan may be variously employed in constructions of different size, material, color, modes of ornamentation, etc.; and may be modified to suit the requirements of each individual construction. To every Elementary Form of Thought there is, consequently, a corresponding and related Law of Number, of Form, of Color, of Chemical Constitution, and of Oral Sound or Speech. Every Basic Idea, to state it otherwise, pertaining to the Universe at large or to any of its Divisions, has its counterpart or double in every other Division. Or, to express it yet another way: the manifold, diverse, and unlike Appearances or Phenomena which the Universe presents to our understanding, are not radically and essentially different; but are the same Typal Ideas or Thoughts of God or of Nature, arrayed in various garbs, and, hence, assuming varying presentations. The Numerical Unit, the Geometrical Point, the Written Dot, the Globule, the Chemical Atom, the Physical Molecule, the Physiological Granule, the Yod or Iota, the least Element of Sound, are, for example, Identical Types, differently modified or clothed upon in accordance with the medium through which they are to be phenomenally presented. It is with this Echo or Repetitory Relationship, existing between all the Domains of the Universe, but more particularly as exhibited between the two Domains of Ideas and Language, that we are at present concerned.

It is sufficiently obvious that Analogy should be sought for first, in the Generals of any department under examination, and, subsequently, through them, in the Particulars. In respect to the two Domains now under special consideration, this relation is between the Fundamental Elements of Thought, including those called by the Philosophers the Categories of the Understanding, and the Fundamental Elements of Language. In pointing out the Correspondence subsisting between the Elements of these two Domains, I shall use, partly by way of condensation, and partly by copious extracts, the Elaborate Expositions contained in the yet unpublished text books of Universology. And, as what follows relating to this subject will consist, almost wholly, of this material, I do not deem it essential to encumber the page with numerous and unnecessary quotation marks. It is advisable to caution the Reader, however, that as my present purpose is explanation and illustration only, and not formal demonstration, what is about to be given will be mostly in the nature of mere statement, unaccompanied by any other evidence of its truthfulness than may be found in the self-supporting reasonableness of the statements themselves.

* * * * *

It was the basic and axiomatic proposition of Hegel's Philosophy, that the first discrimination of Thought and Being in any sphere is into two factors, a Something and a Nothing;—that which constitutes the main or predominant element of the Conception or Creation, and that which we endeavor to exclude from contemplation or activity, but which, nevertheless, by virtue of the impossibility of perfect or absolute abstraction, inevitably becomes a minor or subordinate element in the Idea or the Act which may be engaging the attention. Something and Nothing are also averred to be equal factors in the Constitution of Thoughts or Things, because both are alike indispensable to the cognition of either; because, in other words, it is only by the presence of the Nothing as a background or contrasting element, that the Something has an independent or cognizable existence. If there were no blank space, for instance, there could be no Moon, relatively, or so far as our ability to perceive it is concerned. For the Moon is, in this illustration, a Something which is visible to us, and of which we have a knowledge, only by reason of the fact that it is surrounded by and contrasted with that which is not Moon, and which, in reference to the particular aspect under consideration is, therefore, a Nothing; though it in turn may be a Something or main object of attention in some other view or conception, where some other factor shall be the Nothing.

That this Relationship of Antithesis and Rank existed, as between the Constituents of some Thoughts or Things, was known from the earliest times, and gave rise to the terms Positive and Negative, expressive of it. But Hegel was the first—of modern Philosophers, at least—to point out its necessarily Universal and fundamental character, and to assume it as the starting-point in the development of all Philosophy and Science.

So far as concerns the investigation of the Universe from the Philosophical point of view (which is the less precise and definite aspect), Hegel is right in affirming that the first discrimination of all Thought and Being is that between Something and Nothing. But he is wrong in regarding the starting-point or first differentiation of Science, as being identical with that of Philosophy. Science considers, primarily and predominantly, the more exact and rigorous relations of Phenomena; and the existence of an exact and definite point of departure in Thought and Being, more fundamental, from the Scientific or rigorously precise point of view, than that of Hegel, is the initiatory proposition of UNIVERSOLOGY.

A full explanation of the nature of this Starting-point is not, however, in place here. And as the discrimination into Something and Nothing serves all the purposes of our present inquiry, a single word respecting the character of the Universological Point of Departure in question is all that it is now necessary to say concerning it.

This Starting-point of Thought and Action has reference to the Ideas of Oneness (Primitive Unity) and Twoness (Plurality). These conceptions give rise to two Primordial Principles, which form the basis of the development of UNIVERSOLOGY, and which are fundamental in every Department of the Universe and in the Universe as a whole, namely: The Principle of Unism (from the Latin unus, one), the Spirit of the Number One, the Principle of Undifferentiated, Unanalyzed, Agglomerative Unity; and The Principle of DUISM (from the Latin duo, two), the Spirit of the Number Two, the Principle of Differentiation, Analysis, Separation, Apartness, or Plurality, typically embodied in Two, the first division of the Primitive Unity, and especially representative of the Principle of Disunity, the essence of all division or plurality. One, in the Domain of Number, and UNISM, in the Department of Primordial Principles, correspond, it must be added, with The Absolute (the Undifferentiated and Unconditioned), as one of the Aspects of Being; while Two, in the Domain of Number, and Duism, among Primordial Principles, are allied with The Relative (the Differentiated and Conditioned), of which latter Domain Something and Nothing are the two Prime Factors. The distinction between One and Two, or their analogous Aspects of Being, Absolute and Relative, is, therefore, prior to that between Something and Nothing, because Something and Nothing are two terms of The Relative (Two), which has first to be itself discriminated from The Absolute (One) before it can be sub-divided into these two factors.

While the nature of this discrimination into Something and Nothing may be sufficiently intelligible to the student of Metaphysics, it may not be so to the Reader unaccustomed to Philosophical Speculation. For the purpose, therefore, of rendering it somewhat clearer, I will point out the manner in which it exhibits itself in respect to the Constitution of the External World and elsewise.

The Totality of all material objects and substances is the Positive Material Universe. This is contained in Space, which is the Negative Material Universe. Compoundly the two, Matter and Space, are the whole Material Universe, as to the Parts or Constituent Factors of which it consists.

Theoretically, and in one, and by no means an unimportant sense, the Zero-Element or Nothing-side of the Universe or of a given Department of Being, is one whole half, or an equal hemisphere of the Totality of Being. Thus, for example, Zero (0) in the usage of the Arabic Numbers, while it is represented in an obscure way merely by a single figure below the nine digits, yet stands over, in a sense, against all the digits, and all their possible combinations, as equal to them all in importance. For it is by means of this Zero (0) that the One (1) for instance, becomes 10, 100, 1000, etc.; and that all the Positive Numbers acquire their relative values, according to the places or positions in space which they occupy.

In another sense, however, the Negative Ground of Being, in the Universe at large, or in any given Domain, quickly sinks out of view, and Positive Being becomes the whole of what is commonly regarded. It is in this sense that, ordinarily, in speaking of The Digits of Number, the Zero is left out of the count.

In the same manner, when speaking or thinking of the Material Universe, while the notion of Space is ever present, and is, in the absolute sense, an equal half of the whole conception, still it is Matter, the total congeries of objects and substances in Space, of which we mainly think; the Space, as such, being understood and implied, but subordinated as a mere negative adjunct of the positive idea.

In strictness, Matter and Space are so mutually dependent on each other, that either without the other is an impossible conception. The notion of Space permeates that of Matter; passing through it, so to speak, as well as surrounding it; so that it needs no proof that Matter cannot be conceived of as existing without Space. But, on the other hand, Space is only the negation of Matter; the shadow, as it were, cast by Matter; and, so, dependent on Matter for the very origin of the idea in the mind.

If Space, therefore, be the analogue of Nothing; Matter, wholly apart from Space, is only a theoretical Something, really and actually as much a Nothing as Space itself, when abstractly considered in its equally impossible separation from Matter. But Matter, completely separated from Space, is the exact external analogue of the Something opposed to the Nothing of abstract Metaphysical Thinking. Here, then, is a lucid exposition, by virtue of these analogies, of the famous Metaphysical Axiom of Hegel, which, at its announcement, threw all Europe into amazement:

Something = (equal to) Nothing.

It is the logic of this statement that all Reality or Relative Being is a product of two factors, each of which is a Nothing. The strangeness of this proposition will disappear when it is recognized that these two Nothings are mere aspects or sides of presentation of the Product, which is itself the only Reality. In respect to the Real Being, those two sides are Nothings. But, as appearances or ideal views of the Reality under the process of analytical abstraction in the mind, they are so far Somethings as to receive names and to be treated of and considered as if they were Realities. Reality in the Absolute aspect, the aspect of Undifferentiated Unity, (Unismal), contains these two factors interblended and undiscriminated. In the Relative aspect, that of Duality, (Duismal), it is the compound of these two factors separated and distinguished. Finally, in the Integral aspect of Compound Unity (Trinismal), it consists of the Unismal and the Duismal aspects contrasted—the only real state, or possible condition of actual existence. And this is the Type of all Reality or Real Existence in every department of Being in the Universe.

But practically and ordinarily, these strictly analytical views of the question of existence are abandoned. Reality, compounded, as we have seen that it is when viewed in this way, of a Positive and a Negative Factor, is assumed as itself a Simple Element and set over against the grand residuum of Negation in the Universe of Being. This is what Kant, less analytical than Hegel, has done, when, in distributing the Categories of Thought, he has contrasted REALITY with NEGATION.

This is, as if, in respect to the External Material World, we were to divide Matter—the Planets, for example, first assigning to them the portions of Space which they bodily and respectively fill as if it were a part of themselves—from the remaining ocean or grand residuum of Space which surrounds them and in which they float. This residuum of Space would then be spoken of as Space, and the Planetary Bodies, along with and including the spaces which they fill, would be spoken of as Matter. This is a kind of division, less analytical, but more convenient, obvious, and practical, than the other which would attempt to separate the whole of Space from the Matter within Space. It is in this more practical manner that we ordinarily think of the division of the Heavens into the Domains of Matter and Space.

Between Reality, then, including a subordinate portion of Space—the content and volume of the Planet—and the grand ocean of Space, outlying and surrounding the Planet, there is Limitation, the outline of the Planet, the Limit or dividing surface between the space within it and the space without.

It is this Congeries of the Aspects of Being which Kant denominates QUALITY, as a name of a Group of the Categories of the Understanding; and which he divides into

1. REALITY. 2. NEGATION. 3. LIMITATION.

He then treats REALITY as synonymous with the Affirmative (Positive), and NEGATION as synonymous with the Negative; although, as we have seen, this Affirmative is not strictly equivalent to the Something of Hegel, nor this Negative to his Nothing. For Reality we may, in a general sense, put Substance, and for Limitation we may put Form, Omitting Negation which repeats the Nothing, as Reality repeats the Something, it may now be said that the next Grand Division of the Elements of Universal Being (after that into Something and Nothing) is into

1. SUBSTANCE. ) = 3. EXISTENCE. 2. FORM. )

That is to say: The Relative (The Domain of Cognizable Being) is first made known to us through the differentiation and discrimination of the two Factors Something and Nothing which lie undifferentiated and indistinguishable in The Absolute (The Primitive Ground of Being). The Relative then subdivides into 1. Substance (Reality), and, 2. Form (Limitation), which reunite to constitute that actualized Being which we denominate Existence. Or, tabulated, thus:

THE ABSOLUTE (THE PRIMITIVE GROUND OF BEING) CONTAINS UNDIFFERENTIATED AND INDISTINGUISHABLE THE TWO FACTORS SOMETHING and NOTHING WHICH CONSTITUTE THE FIRST TERMS AND DISCRIMINATIONS OF THE RELATIVE (THE DOMAIN OF COGNIZABLE BEING); WHICH ITSELF DIVIDES INTO SUBSTANCE (REALITY) and FORM (LIMITATION), THE PRIME CONSTITUENTS OF EXISTENCE.

To comprehend the vast importance of these discriminations, it is necessary to understand that precisely those Principles of Distribution which are applicable to the Universe at large are found to be applicable to every minor sphere or domain of the Universe; in the same manner as the same Geometrical Laws which prevail in the largest circle prevail equally in the smallest. It is the prevalence of Identical Principles in diverse spheres which is the source of that Universal Analogy throughout all spheres that lies at the basis of UNIVERSOLOGY, and gives the possibility of such a Science. The nature of this Analogy, as well as the value of the discriminations themselves, will be more clearly seen by glancing at corresponding discriminations in other spheres.

In the Constitution of the External World, Something is represented, as we have seen, by the solid and tangible substance which we call Matter, and Nothing by the Expanse of Space.

In the Science of Acoustics, Sound, the pure Phonos, is the Something, the Reality, as it is denominated by Kant, the Positive Factor of Speech. Silence is the relative Nothing, the Negation, so called by Kant, the Negative Factor of Speech. The Silences, or Intervals of Rest which intervene between Sounds (and also between Syllables, Words, Sentences, and still larger divisions of Speech), are only so many successive reappearances of this negative element. Silence, the Nothing of Sound, is, in fact, in the most radical aspect of the subject, one entire half or hemisphere or equal Factor of the whole of Speech or Music. Josiah Warren, the author of a work entitled 'Music as an Exact Science,' is the only writer I have noticed who has had the discrimination distinctively to recognize Silence as one of the Elements of the Musical Structure.

Impliedly it is, however, always so recognized. The Silences intervening between tones tunewise, or in respect to altitude, are, in Musical Nomenclature, denominated Intervals. Timewise Silences, or those which intervene between Tones rhythmically considered, are called Rests. The Intervals of Silence between Syllables and Words, in Oral Speech, are represented in the printed book by what the Printer calls Spaces, which are blank or negative Types interposed between the positive Types expressive of Sounds. This term Space or Spaces carries us to the analogous Total Space or Blank Space and intervening reaches of Space between the Planets, Orbs or Material Worlds, the former the corresponding Nothing of the total Material Universe of which these worlds are the Something; as exhibited in the demonstrations of UNIVERSOLOGY.

In the Domain of Optics, covering the Phenomena of Light, Shade and Color, Light is the Positive Factor or Something, and Darkness the Negative Factor or Nothing. Light is, therefore, the analogue of Sound, and Darkness the analogue of Silence. That is to say, each of these two, Silence and Darkness, denote the absence, the lack, the want or the negation of the opposite and Positive Element or Factor.

So in Thermotics, the Science of Heat, Heat itself is the Positismus or Something of the Domain; and Cold the Negatismus or Correlative Nothing. Heat is, consequently, the analogue of Sound and Light; while Cold is the analogue of Silence and Darkness.

In respect to the Domain of Mind, Positive Mental Experience (Feelings, Thoughts, and Volitions, including self-consciousness) are the Positive Factor, the Something of Mentality. Inexperience, the lack of mental exercitation, hence Ignorance, is the Negative Factor, or Nothing. The Correspondential Relationship or Analogy existing between this Domain of the Universe and others already mentioned is testified to in a remarkable manner by our use of Language. We denominate the want of Feeling Cold or Frigidity—in respect to the Mind or the individual character. The absence of Thought and Knowledge, or, in other words, Intellectual Barrenness, is called Darkness or Obscurity of the Mind. While the lack of Will or Purpose in the Mind is said to be the absence of Tension or Strain (the great Musical term); and the Stillness or quiet hence resulting may be appropriately designated as the Silence of the Mind; Musical Silences being, as pointed out above, technically termed Rests.

With this superficial exhibition of the most radical aspect of the Echo of Idea or Repetition of Type which subsists between all the departments of the Universe, I pass to the more specific consideration of this Analogy as concerning the Domain of Thought and the Domain of Language.

Setting aside from our present consideration Silence, the Negative factor or Negatismus of Language, and fixing our attention upon Sound, the Positive factor or Positismus of Language, we discover it to be composed of two constituents, Vowels and Consonants.

The Vowel is the Substance, the Reality of Language, and the Consonant is the Form, the Limitation.

By Vowel sound is meant the free or unobstructed, and as such unlimited flow of the vocalized or sounding breath. Vowels are defined in the simplest way as those sounds which are uttered with the month open; as a (ah) in Father, o in roll, etc.

Consonants are, on the contrary, those sounds which are produced by the crack of commencing or by obstructing, breaking, or cutting off the sounding breath, by completely or partially closing the organs of speech; as, for instance, by closing the lips, as when we pronounce pie, by, my, etc.; or by pressing the point of the tongue against the gums and teeth, as when we say tie, die, etc.; or by lifting the body of the tongue against the hard palate or roof of the mouth, as when we give the k or hard g sound, as in rack, rag, or in any other similar way.

Consonants are, therefore, the breaks or limitations upon the otherwise unbroken and continuous vocality, voice, or vocalized breath. In other words, as already said, Vowel-Sound is the Elemental Substance, and Consonant-Sound the Elemental Form of Language, or Speech. (By Vowels and Consonants are here meant, the Reader should closely observe, Vowel-Sounds and Consonant-Sounds, as produced by the Organs of Speech, and as they address themselves to the Ear, distinguished and wholly apart from the letters or combinations of letters by which they are diversely represented to the Eye in different languages.)

By a valid but somewhat remote analogy, the Vowel-Sounds of Language may be regarded collectively as the Flesh, and the Consonant-Sounds as the Bone or Skeleton of the Lingual Structure. Flesh is an Analogue or Correspondential Equivalent of Substance. Bone or Skeleton, which gives outline or shape to the otherwise soft, collapsing, and lumpy flesh-mass of the Human or Animal Body, is an Analogue of Correspondential Equivalent of Limitation or Form; as the framework of a house is the shaping or form-giving factor or agent of the entire structure.

Vowel-Sounds are soft, fluent, changeful, and evanescent. One passes easily into another by slight deviations of pronunciation, resulting from trivial differences in National and Individual condition and culture; like the Flesh of the animal, which readily decays from the Bony Skeleton, while the last remains preserved for ages as a fossil. The Vowel-Sounds so readily lose their identity, that they are of slight importance to the Etymologist or Comparative Philologist, who is, in fact, dealing in the Paleontology of Language.

The Consonants are, on the contrary, the Fossils of Speech; bony and permanent representatives of Framework, of Limitation, of Form. Consonant-Sounds are also sometimes denominated Articulations. This word means joinings or jointings. It is from the Latin articulus, a JOINT, and is instinctually applied to the Consonant-Sounds in accordance with their analogy with the Skeleton of the Human or Animal System.

By an easy and habitual slide in the meaning of Words, a term like Joint is sometimes used to denote the break or opening between parts, and sometimes to denote one of the parts intervening between such breaks; as when we speak of a joint of meat, meaning thereby what a Botanist would signify by the term Internode, the stretch or reach or shaft of bone extending from one joint (break) to another, with the meat attached to it.