ted you to know that I had loved
some one before I loved you."

He did not see her face, he only heard her quiet voice. He had no
thought of Adam, whom she had known so short a time, who was already
bound; he only fancied that she spoke of some young lover who had
touched her heart, and while he smiled at the nice sense of honor that
prompted the innocent confession, he said, with no coldness, no
curiosity in voice or face--

"No need to tell it, dear. I have no jealousy of any one who has gone
before me. Rest assured of this, for if I could not share so large a
heart with one who will never claim my share I should not deserve it."

"That is so like you! Now I am quite at ease."

He looked down at her as she went beside him, thinking that of all the
brides he had ever seen his own looked least like one.

"I always thought that you would make a very ardent lover, Sylvia. That
you would be excited, gay, and brilliant at a time like this. But you
are so quiet, so absorbed, and so unlike your former self that I begin
to think I do not know you yet."

"You will in time. I am passionate and restless by nature, but I am also
very sensitive to all influences, personal or otherwise, and were you
different from your tranquil, sunshiny self, I too should change. I am
quiet because I seem in a pleasant state, half-waking, half dreaming,
from which I never wish to wake. I am tired of the past, contented with
the present, and to you I leave the future."

"It shall be a happy one if I can make it so, and to-morrow you will
give me the dear right to try."

"Yes," she said, and thinking of the solemn promises to be then made,
she added, thoughtfully, "I think I love, I know I honor, I will try to
obey. Can I do more?"

[Illustration]

Well for them both if they could have known that friendship is love's
twin, and the gentle sisters are too often mistaken for each other.
That Sylvia was innocently deceiving both her lover and herself, by
wrapping her friendship in the garb her lost love had worn, forgetting
that the wanderer might return and claim its own, leaving the other to
suffer for the borrowed warmth. They did not know it, and walked
tranquilly together in the summer night, planning the new life as they
went, and when they parted Moor pointed to a young moon hanging in the
sky.

"See, Sylvia, our honeymoon has risen."

"May it be a happy one!"

"It will be, and when the anniversary of this glad night comes round i