"
"A right rare power for beauty to possess!" laughed Haguna. "Are you so
restless that you need this soothing, fair Sir?"
A deep, sweet smile gushed out from his eyes and illumined his face.
He stretched out his arms lovingly into the warm air, as if he thus
infolded some rich joy, and answered, musingly,--
"In ordinary action, thought, and feeling,--we are too conscious of
ourselves, we are perplexed with the miserable little 'I,' that, by
claiming deed and thought for its own work, makes it little and mean.
But the wondrous Beautiful comes to us entirely from outside; our very
contemplation of it does not belong to us; we are overpowered
and conquered by the vast idea that broods over us. And so that
contemplation is pure happiness."
Haguna laughed a little, and a little wondered what he meant; then
observed, lightly,--
"You must value yourself very modestly, to consider your greatest
happiness to consist in losing your self-consciousness,--unless,
indeed, like Polycrates, you hope to insure future prosperity by
sacrificing your most valuable possession."
"If so, I, like Polycrates, am the gainer by my own precaution; for, in
your presence, dear lady, do I first truly find my right consciousness.
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