The Love- Light es

not know that it is he himself who crowned her,
and if the girl is as pure as he, their love is the
one form of idolatry that is not quite ignoble. It
is the joining of two souls on their way to God.
But if the woman be bad, the test of the man is
when he wakens from his dream. The nobler
his ideal, the further will he have been hurried
down the wrong way, for those who only run
after little things will not go far. His love may
now sink into passion, perhaps only to stain its
_ wings and rise again, perhaps to drown.

Babbie, what shall I say of you to make me
write these things? I am not your judge. Shall
we not laugh at the student who chafes when be-
tween him and his book comes the song of the
thrushes, with whom, on the mad night you
danced into Gavin’s life, you had more in com-
mon than with Auld Licht ministers? The glad-
ness of living was in your step, your voice was
melody, and he was wondering what love might
be.

You were the daughter of a summer night,
born where all the birds are free, and the moon
christened you with her soft light to dazzle the
eyes of man. Not our little minister alone was
stricken by you into his second childhood. To
look upon you was to rejoice that so fair a thing
could be; to think of you is still to be young.
Even those who called you a little devil, of
whom I have been one, admitted that in the
end you had a soul, though not that you had
been born with one. They said you stole it, and
~ so made a woman of yourself. But again I say
Iam not your judge, and when I picture you as