one great lasting
shadow, because of the recollection of you. How will it be, think you,
when I wake up to-morrow and find you are gone--if I sleep at all that
is? How will it be when, day after day, week after week---- Ah, love,
love," she broke off, "and yet I cannot say, 'Why did you do it?' for
your very cruelty in doing it is sweet--sweet, do you hear, Laurence?
Have you ever been loved--tell me, have you, have you?" she went on,
drawing his head down with a sort of fierceness and again pressing her
burning lips to his.

"At the twelfth hour! at the twelfth hour!" he repeated, in a kind of
condemnatory merciless tone, while his clasp tightened around the lovely
form, which seemed literally to hang in his arms. "Love of my heart,
think what such an hour as this might have been, not once, but again and
again, and that undashed with the pain of immediate parting as now. Why
did we--why did you--wait until the very twelfth hour? Why?"

"Why, indeed? Darling, darling, don't reproach me. You have drawn my
very heart and soul into yours. Think of it ever, day and night,
whatever may befall you. Oh, Laurence, my heart's life!"

Now this hard, stony, self-controlled stoic discovered that his granite
nature was shaken to its foundation. But, even then, the unutterable
sweetness of the thought that he, and he alone, had lived to inspire the
anguish of the pleading tones that thrilled to his ear, thrilled with
love for him, to enkindle the light that shone from those eyes, melting
with love for him; this thought flowed in upon the torrent-wave of his
pain, rendering it bliss, yet lashing it up the more fiercely.

There was silence for a few moments. Both stood gazing into each other's
eyes; gazing, as it were, into the innermost depths of each other's
soul. Then the sound of voices drawing nearer, rising above the clanking
hum of the Crown Reef battery, seemed to warn them that if their last
farewell was to be made alone the time to make it had come.

"Good-bye, now, love of my heart," he whispered, between long, burning,
clinging kisses. Now that this final parting had come, the dead,
dreary, heartsick pain of it seemed to choke all utterance.

She strained him to her, and heart throbbed against heart. Even now she
seemed to see his face mistily and far away.

"Oh, it is too bitter!" she gasped, striving to drown her rising sobs.
"Laurence, my darling! Oh, my love, my life, my ideal--yes, you were
that from the moment