. "Yes, Alan, if it is
any help to you to know it, I shall be glad when we need never part."

"I sometimes wonder," he murmured, "whether that day will ever come!"

"Oh, yes, it will come," she answered gently. "I think that after our
long days of darkness there is sunshine for us--somewhere--by and by."

And then the music began, and as the two listened to the mighty
harmonies, their hands met and clasped each other under cover of the
book which Lettice held, and their hearts seemed to beat in unison as
the joyous choral music pealed out across the hall--

"Freude, schoener Goetterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken,
Himmlische, dein Heiligthum,
Deine Zauber binden wieder,
Was die Mode streng getheilt;
Alle Menschen werden Bruder,
Wo dein sanfter Fluegel weilt."

"I feel," said Alan, as they lingered for a moment in the dimness of the
gallery when the symphony was over, and the crowd was slowly filing out
into Regent Street and Piccadilly, "I feel as if that hymn of joy were
the prelude to some new and happier life."

And Lettice smiled in answer, but a little sadly, for she saw no happier
life before them but one, which must be reached through tortuous courses
of perplexity and pain.

The dream of joy had culminated in that brief, impulsive, unconscious
transmigration of soul and soul; but with the cessation of the music it
dissolved again. The realities of their condition began to crowd upon
them as they left the hall. But the disillusion came gradually. They
still knew and felt that they were supremely happy; and as they waited
for the cab, into which Alan insisted on putting her, she looked at him
with a bright and grateful smile.

"I am so glad I saw you. It has been perfect," she said.

He had made her take his arm--more for the sake of closer contact than
for any necessity of the crowd--and he pressed it as she spoke.

"It is not quite over yet," he said. "Let me take you home."

"Thank you, no. Not to-day, Alan. See, there is an empty hansom."

He did not gainsay her, but helped her carefully into the cab, and, when
she was seated, leaned forward to clasp her hand and speak a parting
word. But it was not yet spoken when, with a sharp cry, Lettice started
and cast herself in front of him, as though to protect him from a danger
which he could not see.

In the confused press of men and women, horses and carriages, which
filled the street