LITERATURE. 



and begin to look forward to his return, here again is the abyss, which, surrountled by one 

 of the river's arms, offers to my despair the lifeless and dreary contemplation of its unfathom- 

 able and empty depth. When I am wearied into immobility and my tears have ceased to 

 flow, then come back the host of my small neighbours, ottering me the flat and unpalatable 

 solace of what they call reason. Poor things ! They do not know; they have never tasted 

 the supreme rapture of the warm and perfumed kiss. How could they understand the cravings 

 of my heart, and the consuming aspirations of the whole of my being? They speak of time, 

 distance, duty, propriety, rights. What is all that to the writhing of the soul, to the throb 

 of my heart, to the pulse of my life, to the impulse of my love? My love, is it not incom- 

 mensurable as inffnitude, is it anything else to me but infinitude itself? Is it not fuller, 

 stronger than anything which has been, is, or shall be? Can anyone love more than I do? 

 Is the great and generous heart of my radiant War fuller than mine, have his eyes shed more 

 tears, has his soul been deeper than mine in the abyss of suftering and despair? What are 

 the pangs of the whole universe to the everlasting bursting of my heart, which is full of him 

 and ' lives of dolour '? After all, my little neighbours are doing it out of kindness and wish, 

 some of them at least, to see me happy, in the condition in which they consider it has been 

 a great honour for me to be placed, and, accustomed for ages to their daily, nightly, eternal 

 volitions in the same passionless, monotonous existence they cannot understand that such 

 a life is in its agony an eternal death ; born into paralysis they fail to understand the bleeding 

 joys of activity. For them triumph and fall, smile and tear, genius and madness, love and 

 despair, life and death, are of ditfert'ut essences, and they shun the one from fear of the other 

 But why should 1 tluniv of them? . . . great or small, the asters which stud 

 the depth of space . . . they are nothing to me, they do not even exist because they 

 cannot pour from out of their bosom any of tlie sympathy whieli makt-s us kin, and without 

 which one remains a stranger to all." 



'" Too long have I been helpless in my dreary immobility ! loo long, too long ! . . 

 To be I must live, to live I must act, I must rush at any cost towards the object of my life, 

 towards the centre of my love. 



So said Atah, and tlie deed followed the thought. 



As she started on her journey, her guardians made aware of it by the disturbance caused 

 among the surrounding asters, who became agitated like waves, whose tides are troubled 

 by a cataclysm, lost control of themselves and began to tremble and give way, and the change 

 in their respective positions is still to be seen in the ill-shaped figure which before that time 

 offered the image of a perfect cross, the centre of which was occupied by poor little Atah. 



Her efforts lasted as long as the night, autl deaf to the voices of her guardians she was 

 on the ])oint of escaping from the barrier formed by them, when the radiant face of War 

 appeared on the horizon. Notwithstanding her unifinching resolve, sweet Atah stopped 

 and remained motionless as she was wont to do every morning, lost in the contemplation of 

 the. beauty of her beloved God. 



At a glance at the altered position of the asters. War realised that sometliing had gone 

 wrong, and in an instant he was hearing an account of it from the guardians of Atah. 



Not knowing the real motives, which, as it always happens, were misconstrued or rather 

 given from prejudiced witnesses. War went uj) to Atah who tremljled with joy at his approach. 



" I wanted thee, my God ! " did slie cry. " I wanted thee. I thought that thou hadst 

 forgotten me." 



" Forgotten ! " answered War, with a strange expression on his face where the rapture 

 of love and the sadness of omniscience were intermingled and increased his already incom- 

 parable beauty. " Forgotten, my sweet Atah ! The remembrance of love is eternal, 

 imperishable. Forgotten ! I often wish that it were possible, but what has been is, and 

 shall be forever . . . All the junvers of the Gods, all the heroism, all the sacrifice cannot 

 erase one minute of the past. Why hast thou doubted me? What have I done that my 

 bleeding heart should be tortured by the one 1 have loved so deeply, and who knows why I 



