how I love Alice! More than words can tell. You've known me
all my life, and Alice has known me. Will you let her be my wife?"

The smile was gone from Canon Pascal's face. A moment ago, and he,
gazing up at the moon, had been recalling, with a boyish freshness of
heart, the days of his own happy though protracted courtship of the dear
wife, who might be gazing at the same scene from her window in his
country rectory. His face grew almost harsh with its grave
thoughtfulness as his eyes fastened upon the agitated features of the
young man beside him. A fine-looking young fellow, he said to himself;
with a frank, open nature, and a constitution and disposition unspoiled
by the world. He needed nobody to tell him what his old pupil was, for
he knew him as well as he knew his own boys, but he had never thought
of him as any other than a boy. Alice, too, was a child still. This
sudden demand struck him into a mood of silent and serious thought; and
he paced to and fro for a while along the corridor, with Felix equally
silent and serious at his side.

"You've no idea how much I love her!" Felix at last ventured to say.

"Hush, my boy!" he answered, with a sharp, imperative tone in his voice.
"I loved Alice's mother before you were born; and I love her more every
day of my life. You children don't know what love means."

Felix answered by a gesture of protest. Not know what love meant, when
neither day nor night was the thought of Alice absent from his inmost
heart! He had been almost afraid of the vehemence of his own passion,
lest it should prove a hindrance to him in God's service. Canon Pascal
drew his arm affectionately through his and turned back to pace the
cloister once more.

"I'm trying to think," he said, in a gentler voice, "that Alice is out
of the nursery, and you out of the schoolroom. It is difficult, Felix."

"You were present at my ordination last week," exclaimed Felix, in an
aggrieved tone; "the Church, and the Bishop, and you did not think me
too young to take charge of souls. Surely you cannot urge that I am not
old enough to take care of one whom I love better than my own life!"

Canon Pascal pressed Felix's arm closer to his side.

"Oh, my boy!" he said, "you will discover that it is easier to commit
unknown souls to anybody's charge, than to give away one's child, body,
soul, and spirit. It is a solemn thing we are talking of; more solemn,
in some respects, than my girl's death. I would rathe