looked up at the Dukes of Westboro' musingly, and
there was not a peer or a noble better to look upon or who had been at
heart a truer lover, although he did not know it.

During the lapse of time between leaving this same room and his present
return, Bulstrode had not tossed on a sleepless bed; he had slept
soundly, and during his rest the several dials had called out like
bells, their voice, _Utere dum licet_; and finally a real bell had
roused him to the fact that it was day, a new day, and that unless he
was killed en route to the castle, nothing could keep him from the
place and from her.

He had no consolation in the fact that the honor and decency of society
were by him strengthened and retained, nor did he plan out the sane,
wise project of not seeing her again. Nor did he weigh or balance his
charge or responsibility. There had been a cessation of vibration of
any kind, and only one supreme, sovereign reality took possession of
the world and of himself, and the limitless beauty and the limitless
delight he had breathed in ever since he left her and knew how she
loved him. Nothing in life, he had so felt, could dull or tarnish the
glory of her face; nothing, no matter what life held for them both,
could efface the touch she had laid upon him, as her arms were about
him. Through the interval his past life appeared to have been, on
through the new and unlived interval to come, she would be as last
night she had been, she would look at him as last night she had looked.
"Heavens!" he meditated, in the faces of the self-indulgent, cynical
Westboro's, "I am not going to be blase through six paradises just
because there happens to be a seventh!"

A new fire spun its lilac flames behind his back. The spicy breath of
the wreaths of hemlock was deliciously sweet. Little by little the sun
had made its eastern way and sparkled at the pane outside, and in the
radiant clarity the terrace and its charming railing, the urns with the
little cedars, stood out clearly; and more than all else, the truth
cried itself to him, that whatever happened, she was still here, still
in the house with him.

He had chosen a Christmas gift for her in London, and determined to
send it up to her now with some roses, and in this way to announce the
fact that he had come back from The Dials and was ready to use the day
as she liked. He felt only how beautiful it would be to see her, that
it did not for a second occur to him to wonder if