battering years for many a generation even now. They entered by the
side-door, went eastward, and sat down by the altar-steps.

The heavy arch spanning the junction of tower and nave formed to-night
a black frame to a distant misty view, stretching far westward. Just
outside the arch came the heap of fallen stones, then a portion of
moonlit churchyard, then the wide and convex sea behind. It was a
coup-d'oeil which had never been possible since the mediaeval masons
first attached the old tower to the older church it dignified, and
hence must be supposed to have had an interest apart from that of simple
moonlight on ancient wall and sea and shore--any mention of which has by
this time, it is to be feared, become one of the cuckoo-cries which are
heard but not regarded. Rays of crimson, blue, and purple shone upon the
twain from the east window behind them, wherein saints and angels vied
with each other in primitive surroundings of landscape and sky, and
threw upon the pavement at the sitters' feet a softer reproduction of
the same translucent hues, amid which the shadows of the two living
heads of Knight and Elfride were opaque and prominent blots. Presently
the moon became covered by a cloud, and the iridescence died away.

'There, it is gone!' said Knight. 'I've been thinking, Elfride, that
this place we sit on is where we may hope to kneel together soon. But I
am restless and uneasy, and you know why.'

Before she replied the moonlight returned again, irradiating that
portion of churchyard within their view. It brightened the near part
first, and against the background which the cloud-shadow had not yet
uncovered stood, brightest of all, a white tomb--the tomb of young
Jethway.

Knight, still alive on the subject of Elfride's secret, thought of her
words concerning the kiss that it once had occurred on a tomb in this
churchyard.

'Elfride,' he said, with a superficial archness which did not half cover
an undercurrent of reproach, 'do you know, I think you might have told
me voluntarily about that past--of kisses and betrothing--without giving
me so much uneasiness and trouble. Was that the tomb you alluded to as
having sat on with him?'

She waited an instant. 'Yes,' she said.

The correctness of his random shot startled Knight; though, considering
that almost all the other memorials in the churchyard were upright
headstones upon which nobody could possibly sit, it was not so
wonderful.

Elfride did not eve