flood of sunshine upon our lives now?"

"That is an odd question, and a thoroughly characteristic one," he
replied slowly. "Unfortunately all the events of life, as well as the
laws of Nature, go to bear out the opinions of the theologians.
Everything must be paid for, and from this rule there is no escape.
Everything, therefore, resolves itself into a mere question of price--
e.g., Is the debt incurred worth the huge compound interest likely to be
exacted upon it in the far or near future? Now apply this to the
present case. Do you follow me?"

"Perfectly. If our love is wrong--wicked--we shall be called upon to
suffer for it sooner or later?"

"That is precisely my meaning. I will go further. The term `poetic
justice' is, I firmly believe, more than a mere idiom. If we are doing
wrong through love for each other we shall have to expiate it at some
future time. We shall be made to suffer _through_ each other. Now,
Eanswyth, what do you say to that?"

"I say, amen. I say that the future can take care of itself, that I
defy it--no--wait!--not that. But I say that if this delirious,
entrancing happiness is wrong, I would rather brave torments a
thousand-fold, than yield up one iota of it," she answered, her eyes
beaming into his, and with a sort of proud, defiant ring in her voice,
as if throwing down the gage to all power, human or divine, to come
between them.

"I say the same--my life!" was his reply.

Thus the bargain was sealed--ratified. Thus was the glove hurled down
for Fate to take up, if it would. The time was coming when she--when
both--would remember those defiant, those deliberate words.

Not to-day, however, should any forebodings of the Future be suffered to
cloud the Present. They fled, all too quickly, those short, golden
hours. They melted one by one, merged into the dim glories of the past.
Would the time come when those blissful hours should be conjured forth
by the strong yearnings of a breaking heart, conjured forth to be lived
through again and again, in the day of black and hopeless despair, when
to the radiant enchantment of the Present should have succeeded the woe
of a never-ending and rayless night?

But the day was with them now--idyllic, blissful--never to be forgotten
as long as they two should live. Alas, that it fled!

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tom Carhayes returned that evening in high good humour. He was
accomp