at his sacrifice of himself, and next,
by degrees, as an absolute visible fleshly fact. She had come out of her
martyrdom stamped with the heavenly sign-mark.

"Those are the old trees I used to speak of," she said, pointing to the
two pines in the miller's grounds. "They always look like Adam and Eve
turning away."

"They do not make you unhappy to see them, Dahlia?"

"I hope to see them till I am gone."

Edward pressed her fingers. He thought that warmer hopes would soon flow
into her.

"The neighbours are kind?" he asked.

"Very kind. They, inquire after me daily."

His cheeks reddened; he had spoken at random, and he wondered that
Dahlia should feel it pleasurable to be inquired after, she who was so
sensitive.

"The clergyman sits with me every day, and knows my heart," she added.

"The clergyman is a comfort to women," said Edward.

Dahlia looked at him gently. The round of her thin eyelids dwelt on him.
She wished. She dared not speak her wish to one whose remembered mastery
in words forbade her poor speechlessness. But God would hear her prayers
for him.

Edward begged that he might come to her often, and she said,--

"Come."

He misinterpreted the readiness of the invitation.

When he had left her, he reflected on the absence of all endearing
epithets in her speech, and missed them. Having himself suffered, he
required them. For what had she wrestled so sharply with death, if not
to fall upon his bosom and be his in a great outpouring of gladness? In
fact he craved the immediate reward for his public acknowledgement of
his misdeeds. He walked in this neighbourhood known by what he had done,
and his desire was to take his wife away, never more to be seen there.
Following so deep a darkness, he wanted at least a cheerful dawn: not
one of a penitential grey--not a hooded dawn, as if the paths of life
were to be under cloistral arches. And he wanted a rose of womanhood
in his hand like that he had parted with, and to recover which he had
endured every earthly mortification, even to absolute abasement. The
frail bent lily seemed a stranger to him.

Can a man go farther than his nature? Never, when he takes passion on
board. By other means his nature may be enlarged and nerved, but passion
will find his weakness, and, while urging him on, will constantly betray
him at that point. Edward had three interviews with Dahlia; he wrote to
her as many times. There was but one answer for him; and when he c