that his door is half open, and, hesitating,
wonders, with a quick pang at her heart, why this should be the case.

Summoning courage she advances softly over his threshold, and then sees
that the bed within is unoccupied, that to-night, at least, its master
is unknown to it.

A shade darkens her face; stepping back on to the corridor she thinks
deeply for a moment, and then, laying her candle on a bracket near, she
goes noiselessly down the stairs again, across the silent halls, and,
opening the hall door, steps out into the coming dawn.

Over the gravel, over the grass, through the quiet pleasaunce she goes
unswervingly, past the dark green laurels into the flower garden, and
close to the murmuring streamlet to where a little patch of moss-grown
sward can be seen, surrounded by aged elms.

Here she finds him!

He is asleep! He is lying on his back, with his arms behind his tired
head, and his beautiful face uplifted to the heavens. Upon his long dark
lashes lie signs of bitter tears.

Who shall tell what thoughts had been his before kind sleep fell upon
his lids and drove him into soothing slumber

"The sweetest joy, the wildest woe, is love;
The taint of earth, the odor of the skies
Is in it."

So sings Bailey. More of wild woe than joy must have been in Fabian's
heart before oblivion came to him. Was he thinking of her--of Portia?
For many days his heart has been "darkened by her shadow," and
to-night--when all his world was abroad, and he alone was excluded from
prostrating himself at her shrine--terrible despair had come to lodge
with him, and grief, and passionate protest.

Stooping over him, Portia gazes on him long and earnestly, and then, as
no dew lies upon the grass, she sits down beside him, and taking her
knees into her embrace, stays there silent but close to him, her eyes
fixed upon the "patient stars," that are at last growing pale with
thought of the coming morn.

The whole scene is full of fantastic beauty--the dawning day; the man
lying full length upon the soft green moss in an attitude suggestive of
death; the girl, calm, passionless, clad in her white clinging gown,
with her arms crossed, and her pale, upturned face beautiful as the dawn
itself.

The light is breaking through the skies; the stars are dying out one by
one. On the crest of the hill, and through the giant firs, soft beams
are coming; and young Apollo, leaping into life, sends out a cr