it would be to see them turn
cold after they have been--stars of love. That expresses them."

"Yes, that expresses them," Mary almost whispered. She closed her
eyelids for an instant and Vanno's eyes looked into hers, as they had
looked in the cure's garden, after the first kiss. Nothing that Marie
could have said would have made her understand as clearly. If she were
as Marie was, she felt that she could not tell Vanno, now that his eyes
had worshipped her. She would not marry him and _not_ tell, if there
were things that ought to be told; but she would go away, far away,
where the dear eyes might never look at her again.

"You don't know yet what it is to love," Marie went on; and Mary
answered, as if she were speaking to herself, "I almost think I do
know--now."

"If you do, you can understand me."

"I am beginning to understand," Mary said.

"You swear that you've said nothing to Vanno, to make him suspect? When
he told you about his brother and sister-in-law, did he mention my name
as--as a girl?"

"He said your name was Marie Gaunt----"

"Oh! And then?"

"I believe I talked about having a friend once with a name rather like
yours, but not quite. That's all, truly. I had no idea that Marie
Gaunt----"

"Did you speak about the convent?"

"I told him and the cure that I'd been brought up at a convent school,
but I didn't say where it was, or anything about it at all. There was no
time or chance then. I meant to tell Vanno lots of things when we were
alone; but there was only our walk down the mountain together, and we
had so much to say to each other about the present and future, I forgot
about the past, and I think he did, too. The only thing I've had time to
say about myself is that I've no relatives except a very disagreeable
aunt and cousin. There was nothing, not a word, that you need be afraid
of."

"Thank God!" exclaimed Marie, with a sigh as of one who wakes to
consciousness free of pain, after an operation which might have opened
the door of death. "And you'll swear to me that never will you tell
Angelo, or Vanno, or any one else at all, that you'll not even confess
to a priest that I was Marie Grant, a girl you knew at the convent of
St. Ursula-of-the-Lake."

"I'll swear it, if that will make you happier."

"It will--it does. Swear that nothing can tempt you to break your word."

"Nothing shall tempt me to break my word."

"Swear by your love for Vanno, and his for you."

"I swear by