sight which always caused him the keenest distress.

"But," he cried, with tears in his own eyes, "it is impossible that you
should suffer all this through me, and I not even make an attempt to
clear you of such vile charges!"

"It was my own fault. I was thoughtless. I ought to have known that
people's always ready to think harm. But I think of nothing when I'm
with you, Julian!"

He had disengaged himself from her hands, and was holding one of them
in his own. But, as she made this last confession, she threw her arms
about his neck and drooped her head against his bosom.

"Oh, if you only felt to me like I do to you!" she sobbed.

No man can hear without some return of emotion a confession from a
woman's lips that she loves him. Harriet was the only girl whom Julian
had ever approached in familiar intercourse; she had no rival to fear
amongst living women; the one rival to be dreaded was altogether out of
the sphere of her conceptions,--the ideal love of a poet's heart and
brain. But the ideal is often least present to us when most needed.
Here was love; offer but love to a poet, and does he pause to gauge its
quality? The sudden whirl of conflicting emotions left Julian at the
mercy of the instant's impulse. She was weak; she was suffering through
him; she loved him.

"Be my wife, then," he whispered, returning her embrace, "and let me
guard you from all who would do you harm."

She uttered a cry of delight, and the cry was a true one.

CHAPTER XIV

NEAR AND FAR

Osmond Waymark was light-hearted; and with him such a state meant
something not at all to be understood by those with whom lightness of
heart is a chronic affection. The man who dwells for long periods face
to face with the bitter truths of life learns so to distrust a fleeting
moment of joy, gives habitually so cold a reception to the tardy
messenger of delight, that, when the bright guest outdares his
churlishness and perforce tarries with him, there ensues a passionate
revulsion unknown to hearts which open readily to every fluttering
illusive bliss. Illusion it of course remains; is ever recognised as
that; but illusion so sweet and powerful that he thanks the god that
blinds him, and counts off with sighs of joy the hours thus brightly
winged.

He awaited with extreme impatience the evening on which he would again
see Ida. Distrustful always, he could not entirely dismiss the fear
that his first impressions might prove mistaken in