ard his voice? She saw the
future stretch itself before her as a vision. She saw herself forgotten
by this man whom she loved, or from time to time remembered only with
a faint regret. She saw herself growing slowly old, her beauty fading
yearly from her face and form, companioned only by the love that grows
not old. Oh, it was bitter, bitter! and yet she would not have it
otherwise. Even in her pain she felt it better to have found this deep
and ruinous joy, to have wrestled with the Angel and been worsted, than
never to have looked upon his face. If she could only know that what she
gave was given back again, that he loved her as she loved him, she would
be content. She was innocent, she had never tried to draw him to her;
she had used no touch or look, no woman's arts or lures such as her
beauty placed at her command. There had been no word spoken, scarcely
a meaning glance had passed between them, nothing but frank and free
companionship as of man with man. She knew he did not love his wife and
that his wife did not love him--this she could _see_. But she had never
tried to win him from her, and though she sinned in thought, though her
heart was guilty--oh, her hands were clean!

Her restlessness overcame her. She could no longer lie in bed.
Elizabeth, watching through her veil of sleep, saw Beatrice rise, put on
a wrapper, and, going to the window, throw it wide. At first she thought
of interfering, for Elizabeth was a prudent person and did not like
draughts; but her sister's movements excited her curiosity, and she
refrained. Beatrice sat down on the foot of her bed, and leaning her arm
upon the window-sill looked out upon the lovely quiet night. How dark
the pine trees massed against the sky; how soft was the whisper of the
sea, and how vast the heaven through which the stars sailed on.

What was it, then, this love of hers? Was it mere earthly passion? No,
it was more. It was something grander, purer, deeper, and quite undying.
Whence came it, then? If she was, as she had thought, only a child of
earth, whence came this deep desire which was not of the earth? Had she
been wrong, had she a soul--something that could love with the body and
through the body and beyond the body--something of which the body with
its yearnings was but the envelope, the hand or instrument? Oh, now it
seemed to Beatrice that this was so, and that called into being by her
love she and her soul stood face to face acknowledging their unit