LOVE AND LOSS

All unaware that they had been seen and by no friendly eyes, Godfrey
and Isobel remained embracing each other for quite a long while. At
length she wrenched herself away and, sinking on to a chancel bench,
motioned to him to seat himself beside her.

"Let us talk," she said in a new voice, a strange voice that was low
and rich, such as he had never heard her use, "let us talk, my dear."

"What of?" he asked almost in a whisper as he took his place, and her
hand, which he held against his beating heart. "My soul has been
talking to yours for the last five minutes, or is it five seconds or
five years? It does not seem to have anything more to say."

"Yet I think there is plenty to be said, Godfrey. Do you know that
while we were kissing each other there some very queer ideas got hold
of me, not only of the sort which might be expected in our case? You
remember that Plantagenet lady who lies buried beneath where we were
standing, she whose dress I once copied to wear at the ball when I came
out."

"Don't speak of that," he interrupted, "for then you were kissing
someone else."

"It is not true. I never kissed anyone else in that way, and I do not
think I ever shall. I kissed a rose, that's all, and I gather that you
have done as much and very likely a great deal more. But it is of the
lady I am speaking, not of the ball. She seemed to come up from her
grave and enter into me, and say something."

"Well, what did she say, Isobel?" he asked dreamily.

"That's it, I don't know, although she talked to me as one might to
oneself. All I know is that it was of trouble and patience and great
joy, and war and tragedy in which I must be intimately concerned,
and--after the tragedy--of a most infinite rest and bliss."

"I expect she was telling you her own story, which seems to have ended
well," he replied in the same dreamy fashion.

"Yes, I think so, but also that she meant that her story would be my
story, copied you know, as I copied her dress. Of course it is all
nonsense, just the influence of the place taking hold of me when
overcome by other things, but at the time it seemed very real."

"So does a bad dream," said Godfrey, "but for all that it isn't real.
Still it is odd that everything important seems to happen to us within
a few feet of that lady's dust, and I can't quite disbelieve in spirits
and their power of impressing themselves upon us; I wish I could. The
strange thing is that _you_ sh