old way; and I own
I should like to know--" His voice faltered, and his eyes moistened a
little. He left the sentence unfinished.

Midwinter took his hand and helped him, as he had often helped him to
the words that he wanted in the by-gone time.

"You would like to know, Allan," he said, "that I shall not bring an
aching heart with me to your wedding day? If you will let me go back for
a moment to the past, I think I can satisfy you."

They took their chairs again. Allan saw that Midwinter was moved. "Why
distress yourself?" he asked, kindly--"why go back to the past?"

"For two reasons, Allan. I ought to have thanked you long since for
the silence you have observed, for my sake, on a matter that must have
seemed very strange to you. You know what the name is which appears on
the register of my marriage, and yet you have forborne to speak of it,
from the fear of distressing me. Before you enter on your new life, let
us come to a first and last understanding about this. I ask you--as one
more kindness to me--to accept my assurance (strange as the thing may
seem to you) that I am blameless in this matter; and I entreat you to
believe that the reasons I have for leaving it unexplained are reasons
which, if Mr. Brock was living, Mr. Brock himself would approve." In
those words he kept the secret of the two names; and left the memory of
Allan's mother, what he had found it, a sacred memory in the heart of
her son.

"One word more," he went on--"a word which will take us, this time, from
past to future. It has been said, and truly said, that out of Evil may
come Good. Out of the horror and the misery of that night you know of
has come the silencing of a doubt which once made my life miserable with
groundless anxiety about you and about myself. No clouds raised by my
superstition will ever come between us again. I can't honestly tell you
that I am more willing now than I was when we were in the Isle of Man to
take what is called the rational view of your Dream. Though I know what
extraordinary coincidences are perpetually happening in the experience
of all of us, still I cannot accept coincidences as explaining the
fulfillment of the Visions which our own eyes have seen. All I can
sincerely say for myself is, what I think it will satisfy you to know,
that I have learned to view the purpose of the Dream with a new mind. I
once believed that it was sent to rouse your distrust of the friendless
man whom you had taken as a