h him--that night, for
the first time, I began to love you! It was mean and miserable, wasn't
it, not to be able to appreciate the gift, only to feel when it was
taken away? It was like being good when one is punished, because one
must--"

She laid down her head against his chair with a long sigh. He could bear
it no longer. He lifted her in his arms, talking to her passionately of
the feelings which had been the counterpart to hers, the longings,
jealousies, renunciations--above all, the agony of that moment at the
Mastertons' party.

"Hallin was the only person who understood," he said; "he knew all the
time that I should love you to my grave. I could talk to him."

She gave a little sob of joy, and pushing herself away from him an
instant, she laid a hand on his shoulder.

"I told him," she said--"I told him, that night he was dying."

He looked at her with an emotion too deep even for caresses.

"He never spoke--coherently--after you left him. At the end he motioned
to me, but there were no words. If I could possibly love you more, it
would be because you gave him that joy."

He held her hand, and there was silence. Hallin stood beside them,
living and present again in the life of their hearts.

Then, little by little, delight and youth and love stole again upon
their senses.

"Do you suppose," he exclaimed, "that I yet understand in the least how
it is that I am here, in this chair, with you beside me? You have told
me much ancient history!--but all that truly concerns me this morning
lies in the dark. The last time I saw you, you were standing at the
garden-door, with a look which made me say to myself that I was the same
blunderer I had always been, and had far best keep away. Bridge me the
gap, please, between that hell and this heaven!"

She held her head high, and changed her look of softness for a frown.

"You had spoken of '_marriage!_'" she said. "Marriage in the abstract,
with a big _M_. You did it in the tone of my guardian giving me away.
Could I be expected to stand that?"

He laughed. The joy in the sound almost hurt her.

"So one's few virtues smite one," he said as he captured her hand again.
"Will you acknowledge that I played my part well? I thought to myself,
in the worst of tempers, as I drove away, that I could hardly have been
more official. But all this is evasion. What I desire to know,
categorically, is, what made you write that letter to me last night,
after--after the day b