nt would
be to render inoperative the cause which set that instrument in motion?
A blow from behind, a sudden stab, in the desperate impulse of the
moment--what more likely?

Not of peril, present or potential, however, was he thinking, as he sat
there alone, but of the change, absorbing and entire, which had come
over his life since returning from his all too brief furlough. He had
left, cool, well-balanced, even-minded; he had returned, so far as his
inner moments were concerned, in a trance, a state of absorption. It
was wonderful. He hardly recognised himself. But what a new glad
sunshine was now irradiating his lonely life. The recollection! Why,
he could sit for hours going over it all again. Not again only, but
again and again. Everything, from the first accidental meeting to that
last bright and golden day by an enchanted sea--to the last farewell.
Every word, every tone was recalled and weighed. Ah, he had not known
what it was to live before! He had grovelled like a blind grub in the
dust and darkness--now he was soaring in arrowy gleams upon wings of
light. But--no words had been uttered, no promises exchanged. What
matter? If at times of physical depression he felt misgivings he put
them from him.

True to her promise, Nidia had written--once--and with that letter he
had had no cause to find fault. She had even sent him a dainty little
portrait of herself, the only one she had, she explained; but where that
was habitually kept we decline to say, "We shall meet again," she had
declared. Yet if that utterance were to be unfulfilled, if indeed this
dream were to fade, to go the way of too many such dreams, and to end in
a drear awakening, even then was it not something to have lived in the
dream, to have looked upon life as so new and golden and altogether
priceless? With such considerations would he comfort himself in moments
of depression.

"We shall meet again."

Often he would picture to himself that meeting. There would be others
present most probably, but she, in his sight, would be alone. She would
be surrounded by adorers, of course, but as her eyes met his she would
know there was in reality but one. In all the adjuncts to her serene
loveliness which taste and daintiness could surround her with, she would
stand before him. Such would be their meeting, and upon it he dwelt;
and to it his imagination reached through space, as to the culminating
ecstasy of the goal of a life attai