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stils unceasingly a fine and plashing rain; in summer the spray holds the maidens in a glittering veil, but winter takes the radiant drops and slowly builds them up into a shroud of ice which creeps gradually about the three slight figures: the feet vanish, the waist is encircled, the head is covered, the piteous uplifted arms disappear, as if each were a Vestal Virgin entombed alive for her transgression. They vanishing entirely, the fountain yet plays on unseen; all winter the pile of ice grows larger, glittering organ-pipes of congelation add themselves outside, and by February a great glacier is formed, at whose buried centre stand immovably the patient girls. Spring comes at last, the fated prince, to free with glittering spear these enchanted beauties; the waning glacier, slowly receding, lies conquered before their liberated feet; and still the fountain plays. Who can despair before the iciest human life, when its unconscious symbols are so beautiful?
A STORY OF TO-DAY.
PART V.
There was a dull smell of camphor; a further sense of coolness and prickling wet on Holmes's hot, cracking face and hands; then silence and sleep again. Sometime--when, he never knew--a gray light stinging his eyes like pain, and again a slow sinking into warm, unsounded darkness and unconsciousness. It might be years, it might be ages. Even in after-life, looking back, he never broke that time into weeks or days: people might so divide it for him, but he was uncertain, always: it was a vague vacuum in his memory: he had drifted out of coarse, measured life into some out-coast of eternity, and slept in its calm. When, by long degrees, the shock of outer life jarred and woke him, it was feebly done: he came back reluctant, weak: the quiet clinging to him, as if he had been drowned in Lethe, and had brought its calming mist with him, out of the shades.
The low chatter of voices, the occasional lifting of his head on the pillow, the very soothing draught, came to hi