ure. Nothing will ever be
the same. I want to remember this last evening. I have looked upon
life from the hill tops and I have looked at it along the level ways,
but I have seen nothing in it so beautiful, I have felt nothing in it so
wonderful, as my love for you. You were a dream to me before, half
hidden, only partly realized. Soon you will be a dream to me again.
But never, never, dear, since the magic brush painted the blue into the
skies, the purple on to the heather, the green on to the grass, the
yellow into the gorse, the blue into your eyes, was there any love like
mine!"

She leaned towards him. Her fingers were cold and her voice trembled.

"You must not!" she begged.

He smiled as he passed his arm around her.

"Are we not on the hill top, dear?" he said. "You need have no fear.
Only to-night I felt that I must say these things to you, even though
the passion which they represent remains as ineffective forever as the
words themselves. I have a feeling, you know, that after to-day things
will be different."

"Why should they be?" she asked. "In any case, your time cannot come
yet."

Once more he looked downward into the valley. Like a little speck along
the road a motor-car was crawling along.

"It is Mr. Bomford," he said. "He is coming to look for you."

She rose to her feet. Together they stood, for a moment, hand in hand,
looking down upon the flaming landscape. The fields at their feet were
brilliant with color; in the far distance the haze of the sea. Their
fingers were locked.

"Mr. Bomford," he sighed, "is coming up the hill."

"Then I think," she said quietly, "that we had better go down!"

CHAPTER XVIII

THE END OF A DREAM

Dinner that evening was a curious meal, partly constrained, partly
enlivened by strange little bursts of attempted geniality on the part of
the professor. Mr. Bomford told long and pointless stories with much
effort and the air of a man who would have made himself agreeable if he
could. Edith leaned back in her chair, eating very little, her eyes
large, her cheeks pale. She made her escape as soon as possible and
Burton watched her with longing eyes as he passed out into the cool
darkness. He half rose, indeed, to follow her, but his host and Mr.
Bomford both moved their chairs so that they sat on either side of him.
The professor filled the glasses with his own hand. It was his special
claret, a wonderful wine, the cobwebbed bottle of which, reposing in a