ary?

Celia continued to sit unmoved, composedly looking upon vacancy.
Theron's eyes searched her face in vain for any sign of consciousness
that she had astounded and bewildered him. She did not seem to be
thinking of him at all. The proud calm of her thoughtful countenance
suggested instead occupation with lofty and remote abstractions and
noble ideals. Contemplating her, he suddenly perceived that what she had
been saying was great, wonderful, magnificent. An involuntary thrill ran
through his veins at recollection of her words. His fancy likened it to
the sensation he used to feel as a youth, when the Fourth of July reader
bawled forth that opening clause: "When, in the course of human events,
it becomes necessary," etc. It was nothing less than another Declaration
of Independence he had been listening to.

He sank again recumbent at her side, and stretched the arm behind her,
nearer than before. "Apparently, then, you will never marry." His voice
trembled a little.

"Most certainly not!" said Celia.

"You spoke so feelingly a little while ago," he ventured along, with
hesitation, "about how sadly the notion of a priest's sacrificing
himself--never knowing what love meant--appealed to a woman. I should
think that the idea of sacrificing herself would seem to her even sadder
still."

"I don't remember that we mentioned THAT," she replied. "How do you
mean--sacrificing herself?"

Theron gathered some of the outlying folds of her dress in his hand, and
boldly patted and caressed them. "You, so beautiful and so free, with
such fine talents and abilities," he murmured; "you, who could have the
whole world at your feet--are you, too, never going to know what love
means? Do you call that no sacrifice? To me it is the most terrible that
my imagination can conceive."

Celia laughed--a gentle, amused little laugh, in which Theron's ears
traced elements of tenderness. "You must regulate that imagination of
yours," she said playfully. "It conceives the thing that is not. Pray,
when"--and here, turning her head, she bent down upon his face a gaze of
arch mock-seriousness--"pray, when did I describe myself in these terms?
When did I say that I should never know what love meant?"

For answer Theron laid his head down upon his arm, and closed his
eyes, and held his face against the draperies encircling her. "I cannot
think!" he groaned.

The thing that came uppermost in his mind, as it swayed and rocked in
the tempest o