his heart as though he could never let her go.

CHAPTER IX.

THE AWAKENING.

That thrilling, solemn, proud, pathetic voice,
He stretched his arms out toward that thrilling voice,
As if to draw it on to his embrace.
I take her as God made her, and as men
Must fail to unmake her, for my honor'd wife.

E. B. BROWNING.

Paradise itself could hardly hold an hour of purer and more perfect
bliss than when those two young creatures stood holding each other's
hands and confessing their mutual love.

To Nea it was happiness, the happiness for which she had secretly
longed. To Maurice it was a dazzling dream, a madness, an unreality,
from which he must wake up to doubt his own sanity--to tremble and
disbelieve.

And that awakening came all too soon.

Through the long hours of the night he lay and pondered, till with the
silence and darkness a thousand uneasy thoughts arose that cooled the
fever in his veins and made him chill with the foreboding of evil.

What had he done? Was he mad? Had it been all his fault that he had
betrayed his love? Had he not been sorely tempted? and yet, would not
a more honorable man have left her without saying a word?

How could he go to Mr. Huntingdon and acknowledge what he had done?
that he, a mere clerk, a poor curate's son, had dared to aspire to his
daughter, to become the rival of Lord Bertie Gower--for Nea had
confided to him her father's ambition. Would he not think him mad?
groaned Maurice, or would he turn with that hard, dark look on his
face that he knew so well, and give him a curt dismissal?

Maurice remembered George Anderson and trembled, as well he might; and
then as the whole hopelessness of the case rushed upon him, he thought
that he would tell his darling that he had been mad--dishonorable, but
that he would give her up; that he loved her better than himself, and
that for her own sweet sake he must give her up.

And so through the long, dark hours Maurice lay and fought out his
first fierce battle of life, and morning found him the victor.

The victor, but not for long; for at the first hint, the first
whispered word that he must tell her father, or that he must leave her
forever, Nea clung to him in a perfect passion of tears.

The self-willed, undisciplined child had grown into the wayward,
undisciplined girl. No one but her father had ever thwarted Nea, and
now even his will had ceased to g