ean it has aged me, Winnie. I have observed it myself, and
people tell me it has made me look older than I am by many years.
These furrows around the eyes--these furrows on my brow--you are
kissing them, dear.'

'Oh, I love them; how I love them!' she said. 'I am not kissing them
to smooth them away. To me every line tells of your love for Winnie.'

'And the hair, Winnie--look, it is getting quite grizzled.' Then, as
the lovely head sank upon my breast. I whispered in her ears, 'Is
there at last sorrow enough in the eyes, Winnie? Has the hardening
effect of wealth coarsened my expression? Can a rich man for once
enter the kingdom of love? Is the betrothal now complete? Are we both
betrothed now?'

I stopped, for bliss and love were convulsing her with sobs until you
might have supposed her heart was breaking.

While she lay silent thus, I was able in some degree to call my wits
around me. And the difficulty of knowing in what course I ought to
direct conversation presented itself, and seemed to numb my faculties
and paralyse me.

After a while she became more composed, and sat in a trance, so to
speak, of happiness.

But she remained silent. The conversation, I perceived, would have to
be directed entirely by me. With the appalling seizures ever present
in my mind, I felt that every word that came from my lips was
dangerous.

'Look,' I said, 'the colours of the vapours round the llyn are as
rich as they were when we breakfasted here together.'

'We breakfasted here together! Why, what do you mean?' she said,
looking in my face. 'You forget, Henry, you never knew me in Wales at
all; it was only at Raxton that you ever saw me.'

'I mean when you breakfasted with the Prince of the Mist. I was the
Prince of the Mist, dear.'

She gave me a puzzled look which scared while it warned me. How cruel
it seemed of Sinfi, who had planned this meeting, not to have told me
how much and how little Winnie knew of the past.

'You know nothing about the Prince of the Mist except what I told you
on Raxton sands,' she said. 'But you have been very ill; you will be
well now.'

'Yes,' I said; 'I have found the life I had lost, and these dreams of
mine will soon pass.'

As the conversation went on I began to see that she remembered our
meetings on the sands--remembered everything up to a certain point.
What was that point? This was the question that kept me on
tenterhooks.

Every word she uttered, however, shed light into