ilence, the euphonious silence of dual solitude, was only broken by the
casual twang of lute strings, or the sudden enunciation of a
half-modelled thought.

"A year to-morrow since our wedding day." His voice thrilled with love
and tenderness, its tone caressed her ears, though her eyes remained
closed.

"You have been happy, dearest?" he said, leaning forward and clasping
one of her warm, white hands.

"Very happy."

"And had all you anticipated?"

"All--more," she breathed, with opening eyelids, "you have been very
good, very generous to me."

"Good? Can selfishness be mistaken for goodness? You said you loved fine
dresses, it became my pleasure to choose you the finest in the
world--you longed for jewels, and it was my pride to search for gems to
match your beauty."

"I was very greedy--too greedy. I care less for such things now. Poverty
makes one worldly, selfish, mercenary; don't you think so? I was so
poor!--the very rustle of silk was music to my ears, and the lustre of
precious stones seemed to conjure majesty and beauty in a flash."

"And now you have nothing left to long for?" He bent over her hand and
kissed it, and the little canoe, like a fairy cockle, began suddenly to
shake and dip in the swell of an unusual tide.

"Nothing, dear," she answered him, while her eye scanned the waves that
had so strangely ruffled their nook. "I wonder if some launch is passing
to swell the river so?"

"Scarcely; that bend in the creek would save the wash from reaching us."

"But the water is agitated; look! it seems as though a high wind were
raking the face of it." She gazed curiously up, and then down the
backwater.

The trees were swaying with a soft unheard whisper of wind, and in the
deepest shadow companies of gnats were playing hide-and-seek with each
other. No sound but the hum of insect life reached them.

"It is strange," she went on, stretching her hand to the quaking water
and withdrawing suddenly from the chill touch of it, "very strange; it
looks as though the sleeping river had suddenly awoken."

"Dear little pottle of whims"--so he had christened her--"what new
romance will she weave?"

"Oh, there is nothing romantic about that. If it were grass, the 'uncut
hair of graves,' it would be different."

"Different! Is grass portentous? churchyard grass especially?"

"Every green blade of the earth must be 'churchyard grass' as you call
it. It all springs up from life that was." She plucked a