ote as if he were to
see them--some day. It's almost strange to me to think that such love
didn't bring him to me by its very force and yearning. One hears, you
know, of thoughts making themselves felt--becoming realities. I wonder
where all those thoughts of mine went!"

He saw them all--those white, innocent thoughts--flying out like birds,
like a flock of white birds, and disappearing in the darkness. How could
a soul not have felt them fluttering about it, crying vainly for
admittance? He almost shared Allida's wonder.

"And to-day, I sent all the letters with the last one telling of my
death. For--I saw it this morning--he is engaged. So I couldn't go on. I
could never love any one else; I shouldn't want to. My heart broke when
I read the paper; really it broke. And I explained it all to him, so
that it could not hurt him, that I was dying because life had become
worthless to me--and yet that there was joy in dying because I could, in
dying, tell him. There had been beauty and joy in loving him; he must
not be too sorry; and he must care for my love. It was a gift--a gift
that I could give him only in going away for ever myself."

She was silent. The evening was late by now, and the fog about them shut
them into a little space, a little island just large enough for their
bench, a bit of path, a dim border of railing opposite, and a branch of
tree overhead. The muffled sound of cautious traffic was far away. They
were wonderfully alone.

Haldicott took one of the hands on which she leaned, and raised it to
his lips.

"Sweet, foolish child!" he said.

She turned her head and looked at him; it was almost as if she saw him
for the first time--the man, not only Life's personification. They could
still see quite clearly each other's faces, and for a long time,
gravely, they looked into each other's eyes.

"Don't you see that it's all a dream?" said Haldicott.

"A dream?" Allida repeated. "The reality of a whole year?"

And yet it was a dream to her; even while she had told him of that year
it was as if she told of something far behind her, lived through long,
long ages ago, in another, a different life.

But she struggled to hold the vanishing pain and beauty of it all--the
reality that, unreal, would make her whole being seem like a little
handful of thin cloud dying away into emptiness.

"This is a dream," she said, still looking at him, "_this, this_. What
am I doing here?" She rose to her feet, gasping n