The Nuptial Flight 
with it. Immediately crowds collect and 
follow her into the sea of gladness, whebe 
limpid boundaries ever recede. She, drunk 
with her wings, obeying the magnificent 
law of the race that chooses her lover, and 
enacts that the strongest alone shall attain 
her in the solitude of the ether, she rises 
still; and, for the first time in her life, the 
blue morning air rushes into her stigmata, 
singing its song, like the blood of heaven, 
in the myriad tubes of the tracheal sacs, 
nourished on space, that fill the centre of 
her body. She rises still. A region must 
be found unhaunted by birds, that else 
might profane the mystery. She rises still; 
and already the ill-assorted troop below are 
dwindling and falling asunder. The feeble, 
infirm, the aged, unwelcome, ill fed, who 
have flown from inactive or impoverished 
cities—these renounce the pursuit and disap- 
pear in the void. Only a small, indefatig- 
able cluster remain, suspended in infinite 
opal. She summons her wings for one final 
effort; and now the chosen of incompre- 
hensible forces has reached her, has seized 
her, and, bounding aloft with united impetus, 
249 
