the wash of
the dark river, there was the stillness of the stars, of the white frost
and the bare cliffs. In the northern heavens played a soft light, and
now and then a star shot. The man who marked its trail across the
studded skies thought of himself as of one as far withdrawn as it from
the world of lower lights in the forest at his feet. Already he felt a
prescience of the loneliness of the morrow, and the morrow, and the
morrow, of the slow drift of the days in the waning forest, the hopeless
nights, the terror of that great solitude--and felt, too, a feverish
desire to hasten that approach, to embrace that which was to be
henceforth bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. He wished for the
dash of oars in the dark stream below and for the rise of the moon which
was to shine coldly down upon him, companionless, immured in that vast
fortress from which he might never hope to escape.

The sound of cautious footsteps among the rocks brought his sick and
wandering fancy back to the present. Raising himself upon his elbow and
peering intently into the darkness, he made out two figures, one tall
and large, the other much slighter, advancing towards him. Presently the
larger figure stopped short, and, seating itself upon a flat rock at the
brink of the hill, turned its face towards the fires in the woods below.
The other came on lightly and hurriedly--another moment, and rising to
his knees, he clasped her in his arms and laid his head upon her bosom.

"I never thought to see you again," he said at last.

"I made Regulus bring me," she answered. "The others do not know--they
think me asleep."

She spoke in a low, even, monotonous voice, and the hand which she laid
upon his forehead was like marble. "My heart is dead, I think," she
said. "I wish my body were so too."

He drew her closer to him and covered her face and hands with kisses.
"My love, my lady," he said. "My white rose, my woodland dove!"

She clung to him, trembling. "Down there I was going mad," she
whispered. "But now--now--I feel as though I could weep." He felt her
tears upon his face, but in a moment she was calm again. "Do you
remember the bird we found the other day, all numbed with cold?" she
said. "It had been gay and free and light of heart, but it had not
strength to flutter when I took it in my hands and tried to warm it--and
could not. I am like that bird. The world is very gray and cold, and my
heart--it will never be warm again."

"God