ful young girl, rich, courted, surrounded by an army of
sycophants, should be appealing to a poor dependent for friendship. "I
am only a little dazed ... as any man would be who had been dreaming ...
and saw that dream vanish away...."

"Dreaming?"

"Yes!--we all dream sometimes you know ... and a penniless man like
myself, without prospects or friends is, methinks, more prone to it than
most."

"We all have dreams sometimes," she said, speaking very low, whilst her
eyes sought to pierce the darkness beyond the trees. "I too ..."

She paused abruptly, and was quite still for a moment, almost holding
her breath, he thought, as if she were listening. But not a sound came
to disturb the silence of the woods. Blackbird and owl had ceased their
fight for life, the squirrel had gone to rest: the evening air was
filled only by the great murmur of the distant sea.

"Tell me your dream," she said abruptly.

"Alas! it is too foolish! ... too mad! ... too impossible...."

"But you said once that you would be my friend and would try to cheer my
loneliness."

"So I will, with all my heart, an you will permit."

"Yet is there no friendship without confidence," she retorted. "Tell me
your dream."

"What were the use? You would only laugh ... and justly too."

"I should never laugh at that which made you sad," she said gently.

"Sad?" he rejoined with a short laugh, which had something of his usual
bitterness in it. "Sad? Mayhap! Yet I hardly know. Think you that the
poor peasant lad would be sad because he had dreamed that the fairy
princess whom he had seen from afar in her radiance, was sweet and
gracious to him one midsummer's day? It was only a dream, remember: when
he woke she had vanished ... gone out of his sight ... hidden from him
by a barrier of gold.... In front of this barrier stood his pride ...
which perforce would have to be trampled down and crushed ere he could
reach the princess."

She did not reply, only bent her sweet head, lest he should perceive the
tears which had gathered in her eyes. All round them the wood seemed to
have grown darker and more dense, whilst from afar the weird voice of
that distant sea murmured of infinity and of the relentlessness of Fate.

They could not see one another very clearly, yet she knew that he was
gazing at her with an intensity of love and longing in his heart which
caused her own to ache with sympathy; and he knew that she was crying,
that there was something in