at were drinking in their own pain so greedily. He saw
only Leam, and was conscious only that he loved her and she him.

Presently he said, tempting her with the lover's affectation of
distrust, "I do not think you love me really, my Leam," bending over
her as if he would have folded her to his heart. Had she been any but
Leam he would. But the love-ways that came so easy to him were lessons
all unlearnt as yet by her, and he respected both her reticence and
her reluctance.

"Not love you!" she said with soft surprise--"I not love you!"

"Do you?" he asked.

She was silent for a moment. "I do love you," she said in her quiet,
intense way. "I do not talk--you know that--but if I could make you
happy by dying for you I would. I love you--oh, I cannot say how much!
I seem to love God and all the saints, the sun and the flowers, Spain,
our Holy Mother and mamma in you. You are life to me. I seem to have
loved you all my life under another name. When you are with me I have
no more pain or fear left. You are myself--more than myself to me."

"My darling! and you to me!" cried Edgar.

But his voice, though sweet and tender, had not the passionate ring of
hers, and his face, though full of the man's bolder love, had not
the intensity which made her so beautiful, so sublime. It was all the
difference between the experience which knew the whole thing by
heart, and which cared for itself more than for the beloved, and the
wholeness, the ecstasy, of the first and only love born of a nature
single, simple and concentrated.

Adelaide, watching and listening behind the broken wall, saw and heard
it all. Her head was on fire, her heart had sunk like lead; she could
not stay any longer assisting thus at the ruin of her life's great
hope; she had already stayed too long. As she stole noiselessly away,
her white dress passing a distant opening looked ghastly, seen through
the rising mist which the young moon faintly silvered,

"What is that?" cried Leam, a look of terror on her pale face as she
rapidly crossed herself. "It is the Evil Sign."

"No," laughed Edgar, profiting by the moment to take her in his
arms, judging that if she was frightened she would be willing to feel
sheltered. "It is only one of the ladies passing to go down. Perhaps
it is Adelaide Birkett: I think it was."

"And that would be an evil sign in itself," said Leam, still
shuddering. And yet how safe she felt with his arms about her like
this!

"Poor dea