Page:The Diothas, or, A far look ahead (IA diothasorfarlook01macn).pdf/334

 was yet comparatively early in the morning, I left the building, and hastened out into the open air.

About two-hours' distance by rail, eastward from Salu, was a spot to which I had for some time been intending to make a pilgrimage. It was a spot hallowed by lofty memories. There had been fought the great and terrible contest that proved the turning-point in the hitherto resistless career of the great invader known as the last of the despots.

Once seated in the car, and speeding thither at the rate of a hundred miles an hour, or so, I found myself able to reflect, with some degree of calmness, upon the strange position in which I found myself. Yet, in the midst of my distress, only too well founded as I regarded it, I was fully conscious of the grotesque element in the situation. Was ever mortal involved in such a case as mine? I was not only deeply, irretrievably in love with my own descendant in the three hundred and thirty-first degree,—for such was the exact number of generations from Edith to Reva,—but had also the assurance of that love being fully returned.

But, argued I to myself, as soon as the first feeling of unreasoning consternation had passed, if I am the ancestor of Reva, am I not also my own ancestor? Am I not the ancestor of all the Diothas? At this thought, a thrill of pardonable pride passed through my bosom, as I thought of that noble line, renowned in every department of literature and art, and pre-eminently endowed with every womanly grace.

"A man may not marry his granddaughter," says the canon law. But what about his descendant in the three