ssed between dreams and reality as through tissue-paper.

"I did not mean," she said at last, in a tremor, "that I wanted you to
love me less, but I am almost sorry that you love me quite so much."

He dared say nothing, for he did not altogether understand. "I have
those fears, too, sometimes," she went on; "I have had them when I was
with you, but more often when I was alone. They come to me suddenly,
and I have such eager longings to run to you and tell you of them, and
ask you to drive them away. But I never did it; I kept them to
myself."

"You could keep something back from me, Grizel?"

"Forgive me," she implored; "I thought they would distress you, and I
had such a desire to bring you nothing but happiness. To bear them by
myself seemed to be helping you, and I was glad, I was proud, to feel
myself of use to you even to that little extent. I did not know you
had the same fears; I thought that perhaps they came only to women;
have you had them before? Fears," she continued, so wistfully, "that
it is too beautiful to end happily? Oh, have you heard a voice crying,
'It is too beautiful; it can never be'?"

He saw clearly now; he saw so clearly that he was torn with emotion.
"It is more than I can bear!" he said hoarsely. Surely he loved her.

"Did you see me die?" she asked, in a whisper. "I have seen you die."

"Don't, Grizel!" he cried.

But she had to go on. "Tell me," she begged; "I have told you."

"No, no, never that," he answered her. "At the worst I have had only
the feeling that you could never be mine."

She smiled at that. "I am yours," she said softly; "nothing can take
away that--nothing, nothing. I say it to myself a hundred times a day,
it is so sweet. Nothing can separate us but death; I have thought of
all the other possible things, and none of them is strong enough. But
when I think of your dying, oh, when I think of my being left without
you!"

She rocked her arms in a frenzy, and called him dearest, darlingest.
All the sweet names that had been the child Grizel's and the old
doctor's were Tommy's now. He soothed her, ah, surely as only a lover
could soothe. She was his Grizel, she was his beloved. No mortal could
have been more impassioned than Tommy. He must have loved her. It
could not have been merely sympathy, or an exquisite delight in being
the man, or the desire to make her happy again in the quickest way, or
all three combined? Whatever it was, he did not know; all he knew w