efore the bright wood
fire. He took a chair beside her. She seemed to lapse into profound
thought, and he watched her beautiful grave face with adoring eyes.

"I wish," she said suddenly, "one could live a free, simple,
uncriticised life. Do you remember the old days among the wild hills?
The cool grey dawns... the sharp sweet air... the long gallops over the
rough roads by the rice fields... the strange temples... the songs of
the snake-charmers? Ah, we were happy then, Julian, happier than we
ever realised."

"May we not be still happier?" he said earnestly. "Life has a graver
and a wider meaning, it is true, but that should only give us a deeper
power of appreciation."

A strange smile touched her lips; a smile of mystery, and of dreamy,
unfathomable regret.

"We shall never be happier," she said, "than we were then. I have
always felt that... yes, I know what you would ask. Did I love you
then? Yes, Julian, with all my heart and soul... and yet--and yet--I
could have been nothing more to you than a sister, a friend. There was
a purpose in my marriage."

She ceased speaking. For a moment her eyes closed, her head sank back
wearily on the soft cushions.

Presently she opened them, and met his anxious gaze. "No, I did not
faint," she said. "But, why I know not, that sense of blankness and
dizziness always comes over me when I speak on that subject. There is
something I wish, yet dread, to remember--but, just as I am on the point
of grasping it, there is a blank."

"Do not speak of that time," he said passionately. "I hate to think you
were the wife of that man--it was sacrilege... you--my pure-souled
goddess."

"He was a bad man," she said. "But, up to a certain point, I could
always escape and defy him. He was a coward at heart, and he was afraid
of me."

Then suddenly she stretched out her arm and touched his shoulder with a
timid, caressing movement. "You need not be jealous of those years, my
beloved," she said softly. "No man would, who knew them and valued them
for what they were to me."

He sank on his knees, and folded his arms about her. "Ah, queen of
mine," he said, "it is only natural that I should be jealous of the
lightest touch, or look, or word, that were once another's privilege.
Therein lies the only sting in my happiness--"

"Does not that prove it is of earth--earthly?" she said, as her deep
mournful eyes looked back to his own. "I believe, Julian, it would be
bett