oing to burden you
with unfair remorse for the rest of your days. That's about the truth of
it all, isn't it?" And he so believed it to be, now, the only essential
truth, or, at least, the half-truth that she had better believe in, that
his smile had not a touch of bitterness.

Allida still held her pen and still gazed at him.

"Ah! thank God for it all--for the fact that the letter wasn't waylaid,
and for the fact that you _were_, Allida! When I think of it--that gift
coming to me--your gift, Allida--and not too late--not too late!"

The young man, in his rapturous thankfulness, indifferent to the
guardian presence, raised her hand to his lips, kissing it with a
fervour where tears struggled with smiles.

"I'll go now," Haldicott said gently. "I'm so--immensely glad for you
both."

But Allida, at this, started from her helpless apathy.

"No, no! Don't--don't go!" she cried. "I can't think. It's all so
impossible. Do you mean," and her eyes now went to Ainslie while she
drew her hand from his--"do you mean that you love me?"

"Love you, darling Allida? Don't you see it?"

"Because you got the letter," Allida said, as if linking in her mind a
chain of evidence. "If you hadn't got it--you would not love me now."

"Forgive me, dearest, for my blindness! I should not have known you if I
had not got it."

Allida still looked at him.

"You are just as dear--even dearer than I thought you; you are even more
worthy of any love than I dreamed," she said. Her face had lost all
apathy, all helplessness. It was with the stricken resolution that it
could so strangely show that she pushed back her chair and rose, moving
away from the young man, who, enchantingly a fairy prince, gazed at her
with adoring eyes.

"It was written in a dream," said Allida, clasping her hands and
returning his gaze. "It was written in a dream," she repeated. "It was
all--all the whole year--a dream--only a dream."

The trust of his gaze was too deep for understanding to sink through it.

"I am awake now," said Allida; "you are dearer than I ever dreamed, but
I am awake."

"When reality comes, the past always seems rather dream-like," Ainslie
said. He felt and understood as well, as truly as the other had done.
"Darling Allida, I can never be worthy of such a love as yours, but I
will try. And now that you are awake, you will find how much better
waking is than any dream."

She gasped at this, and retreated before him.

"But I am horri