hat in every life there are _some_ moments that are
_absolutely_ good--that one could not mend even if one were given the
power to try! I suppose that even those who, looking back over their
history, say, most distinctly and certainly, "It was a failure," can yet
lay the finger of memory on _some_ such gold minutes--it may be only
half a dozen, only four, only _two_--but still on some.

This is one of my gold moments, one of those misplaced ones
that have strayed out of heaven, where, perhaps, they are _all_
such--_perhaps_--one can't be _sure_, for what human imagination can
grasp the idea of even a _day_, wholly made of such minutes?

I have forgotten Mrs. Huntley--Mr. Musgrave. Every ill suspicion, every
stinging remembrance, is dead or fallen into a trance. All bad thoughts
have melted away from the earth. Only joyful love and absolute faith
remain, only the knowledge that Roger is mine, and I am his, and that we
are in each other's arms. I do not know how long we remain without
speaking. I do not imagine that souls in bliss ever think of looking at
the clock. He is the first to break silence. For the first time for
eight months I hear his voice again--the voice that for so many weeks
seemed to me no better than any other voice--whose tones I _now_ feel I
could pick out from those of any other living thing, did all creation
shout together.

"Let me look at my wife!" he says, taking my countenance in his tender
hands, as if it were made of old china, and would break if he let it
fall. "I feel as if I had never _had_ a wife before, as if it were quite
a new plaything."

I make no verbal answer. I am staring up with all my eyes into his face,
thinking, with a sort of wonder, how much goodlier, younger, statelier
it is than it has appeared to me in any of those dream-pictures, which
yet mostly flatter.

"My wife! my wife!" he says, speaking the words most softly, as if they
greatly pleased him, and replacing with carefullest fingers a stray and
arrant lock that has wandered from its fellows into my left eye. "What
has come to you? Had I forgotten what you were like? How pretty you are!
How well you look!"

"Do I?" say I, with a pleasant simper; then, with a sudden and
overwhelming recollection of the bilious gingery frock, and the tousled
hair, "No, nonsense!" I say, uneasily, "impossible! You are laughing at
me! Ah!"--(with a sigh of irrepressible regret and back-handed
pride)--"you should have seen me half an h