Page:Across the Stream.djvu/274

264 wisp of mist, like a puff of escaping steam, began to come from it. This grew and collected in wavering masses of weaving lines, formless at first, but then arranging themselves into definite shapes, and he saw, with a thrill of excitement and wonder, that out of them there was being built up the image of Martin, which had issued out of himself. Soon it was complete, and Archie in the glass beheld Martin's face leaning lovingly over his shoulder, and Martin's arm bare like his own, and, warm and solid to the touch, was thrown round his neck.

"Archie, I've been with you all night," he said. "I love to see you and feel you realize yourself. Throw yourself into life: live to the uttermost, and have no thought for the morrow. There is nothing in the world but love and joy. Cling to them, press close to them, lose yourself in them.…"

Martin's smile was compassionate no longer: it was a sunbeam of radiant happiness, and that happiness, so it seemed to Archie, had its source in sympathy with and love for him.

"Don't ever think you are yielding to base impulses," he went on, "provided only you are happy. Happiness is the seal and witness of what is right for you: it is the mark of God's approval. Evil is always painful and repugnant; that is the seal and witness of it. The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace; and aren't you more at peace, more full of joy now that you have resolved to put hate out of your heart? Isn't it sweeter to kiss Helena than to curse her?"

Suddenly, like the stroke of a black wing, there passed through Archie an impulse of sheer abhorrence. All that Martin said sounded divinely comforting and uplifting, but did there not lurk in it the whole gospel of Satanism? And, as that thought crossed his mind, he saw an expression of the tenderest reproach dim for a