light was dazzling, and yet it was full of gentle things that
smiled, somehow, without faces. She was not very imaginative, perhaps,
else the faces might have come too, and voices, and all, save the one
reality which had as yet neither voice nor face, nor any name. It was
all the something that love was to mean, somewhere, some day--the airy
lace of a maiden life-dream, in which no figure was yet wrought amongst
the fancy-threads that the May moon was weaving in the soft spring
night. There was no sadness in it, at all, for there was no memory, and
without memory there can be no sadness, any more than there can be fear
where there is no anticipation, far or near. Most happiness is really of
the future, and most grief, if we would be honest, is of the past.

The young girl sat still and dreamed that the old world was as young as
she, and that in its soft bosom there were exquisite sweetnesses
untried, and soft yearnings for a beautiful unknown, and little pulses
that could quicken with foretasted joy which only needed face and name
to take angelic shape of present love. The world could not be old while
she was young.

And she had her youth and knew it, and it was almost all she had. It
seemed much to her, and she had no unsatisfiable craving for the world's
stuff in which to attire it. In that, at least, her mother had been
wise, teaching her to believe and to enjoy, rather than to doubt and
criticise, and if there had been anything to hide from her it had been
hidden, even beyond suspicion of its presence. Perhaps the armour of
knowledge is of little worth until doubt has shaken the heart and
weakened the joints, and broken the terrible steadfastness of perfect
innocence in the eyes. Clare knew that she was young, she felt that the
white dream was sweet, and she believed that the world's heart was
clean and good. All good was natural and eternal, lofty and splendid as
an archangel in the light. God had made evil as a background of shadows
to show how good the light was. Every one could come and stand in the
light if he chose, for the mere trouble of moving. It seemed so simple.
She wondered why everybody could not see it as she did.

A flash of white in the white moonlight disturbed her meditations. Two
people had come out of the door and were walking slowly across the
platform side by side. They were not speaking, and their footsteps
crushed the light gravel sharply as they came forward. Clare recognised
Brook and La