the
interposing thoughts and images.

The eyes of both were wide, and in their fixity the lights of heaven
were glassed. The face of the one burned with a red spot on the
visibly-defined cheek-bone; the cheeks of the other were, for a marvel,
pale.

Aurora, uplifted on a great wonder and pride and illogical happiness,
was thinking of the days to come, the immediate to-morrows, rich in a
tenderness profounder still than that which had linked her before to the
companion staring at the stars beside her; she thought of how she should
through a wise firmness and God's help steer their course into ways of a
safer and longer happiness than that which he had tendered.

"It would seem rather unnecessary--" came from him through the
transparent darkness in what was to the young driver's ears a monotonous
bar of insignificant sound, "it would seem to me almost imbecile, to say
to you that I love you, when for months I have been hovering around you,
as must have been evident to the dullest, like the care-burthened
honey-fly, possessed with the fixed desire to hide his murmurs in the
rose. When for months I have been, in fact, like a dog with his nose on
your footprints, asking nothing but to lie down at your feet with his
muzzle on your shoe."

She impulsively felt for his hand, and pushed her own into it. "Don't
say another word, Gerald. I daresn't do what you wish, I just daresn't.
I'm plain scared to! And I'm such a fool that I'm nearer to it this
minute than I like to be by a long sight. I'm fond enough of you for
almost anything, and you know it, but I must keep my level head. It
can't be done--a greyhound tied down to a mudturtle. I know what I'm
like,--no disparagement meant, Mrs. Hawthorne,--and what you're like,
and I won't let myself forget. I'm looking out first of all for myself,
but I'm looking out for you, too, dear boy. Don't say any more about it
to-night, Gerald, please, with the stars shining like that, and the air
so sweet that all the fairy-tales you ever heard seem possible. I want
to keep solid earth under my feet."

Gerald was not so devoid of the right masculine spark as not to
recognize the moment for one of which advantage should be taken by any
creature capable of growing a mustache. The thing to be done was to put
his arms around her like a man, and lay his head on her shoulder like a
child, and treat as not existing the barriers which she described as
dividing them.

Often enough in his life Ger