hat I may lead you on the road--and that you, for me, may throw
open the portals?"

"In the future," he said eagerly, "I am content to do your will. But
not now--not to draw the veil from our buried miseries. Let them be as
dead things--out of sight and mind."

"You know," she said, "that nothing dies--not a life, or an act, or a
thought. You may put the past out of sight, but it lives still--lives
in its hidden crimes, its secret sins, its evil and its good--lives to
haunt and shape our future, let that future dream as it will of
forgetfulness."

He rose from his knees, his face was still pale, but his eyes glowed
like living fire.

"When will you wed me, Estarah?" he asked, abruptly.

The soft colour flushed her cheek. Her eyes drooped.

"My heart is yours," she said. "My life lives but in the shadow of your
own. Why should I withhold--this poor gift?"

She placed her hand in his, and let him draw her to his heart. "I will
wed you when you will," she said, "but only if you yield to my
condition. It is an easy one, Julian. Why do you fear?"

Ah--why? He could not answer that question to his own heart, much less
to hers. He could not paint the shuddering horror which had forced him
to veil his eyes and shrink aghast from that last scene in his Dream.

Yet when he looked down on her in her pure womanly beauty, and felt the
clinging tenderness of her arms, and knew that among all the world of
men who had worshipped and wooed her, he alone had kept his place and
awakened a response of tenderness, he felt his heart thrill and glow
with sudden strength and pride.

"It shall be as you wish," he said. "On the night that heralds our
bridal morn, I promise, if my power be still the same, that I will do
your bidding."

She lifted her face. It was radiant with a strange mysterious joy. "At
last," she said, brokenly--"at last I shall know. Every page of my life
will be clear. Heart to heart, soul to soul, so we shall stand, oh,
beloved! You and I, with senses purified, with no secret unshared, with
spirits unfettered and souls at rest, so shall we greet our bridal morn.
For this did I brave the ordeal, for this have I faced almost the
bitterness of death--but the trial is almost over--the goal is almost
reached. Go, now, my life's beloved, lest indeed my heart should break
beneath its weight of joy! Go; but fear not. I am yours for ever in
the life we know, and in the deep Unknown beyond I shall cla