ever-brightening purity and faith, then it makes marriage the most
perfect union on earth,--the sweetest and most blessed
companionship; but when it is a mere gust of fire, bright and
fierce as the sudden leaping light of a volcano, then it withers
everything at a touch,--faith, honor, truth,--and dies into dull
ashes in which no spark remains to warm or inspire man's higher
nature. Better death than such a love,--for it works misery on
earth; but who can tell what horrors it may not create Hereafter!"

The Princess looked at him with a strange, weird gleam in her dark
eyes.

"You are right," she said. "It is just the Hereafter that men
never think of. I am glad you, at least, acknowledge the truth of
the life beyond death."

"I am bound to acknowledge it," returned the Doctor; "inasmuch as
I know it exists."

Gervase glanced at him with a smile, in which there was something
of contempt.

"You are very much behind the age, Doctor," he remarked lightly.

"Very much behind indeed," agreed Dr. Dean composedly. "The age
rushes on too rapidly for me, and gives no time to the
consideration of things by the way. I stop,--I take breathing
space in which to think; life without thought is madness, and I
desire to have no part in a mad age."