with her head. She was like
one who is led to death.

'Then I will not leave you. Let us walk gently on; you shall speak to me
when you feel able.'

He cared for no obstacle now. She was come back to him from the dead,
and to him it was enough of life to hold her. Let the world go; let all
speak of him as they would; this pale, weary-eyed woman should
henceforth represent existence to him. He would know no law but the
bidding of his sovereign love.

She spoke.

'Have I fallen in your eyes?'

'You have always been to me the highest, and will be whilst I live.'

They had passed into the shadow of the trees; he took her hand and held
it. The touch seemed to strengthen her, for she looked at him again and
spoke firmly.

'Neither was my coming without thought of you. I had no hope that you
would be here, no least hope, but I came because it was here I had seen
you.'

'Since Wednesday,' Wilfrid returned, 'I have read your letters many
times. Could you still speak to me as you did then?'

'If you could believe me.'

'You said once that you did not love me.'

'It was untrue.'

'May you tell me now what it was that came between us?'

She fixed upon him a gaze of sad entreaty, and said, under her breath,
'Not now.'

'Then I will never ask. Let it be what it might; your simple word that
you loved me is all I need.'

'I will tell you,' Emily replied, 'but I cannot now. It seemed to me at
the time that that secret would have to die with me; I thought so till I
met you here. Then I knew that, if you still loved me and had been
faithful to me so long, I could say nothing to myself which I might not
speak to you. My love for you has conquered every other love and
everything that I believed my duty.'

'Is it so, Emily?' he asked, with deepest tenderness.

'When I tell you all, you will perhaps feel that I have proved my own
weakness. I will conceal from you nothing I have ever thought; you will
see that I tried to do what my purest instincts urged, and that I have
been unable to persevere to the end. Wilfrid--'

'My own soul!'

'When I tell you all that happened at that time, I shall indeed speak to
you as if your soul and mine were one. It may be wrong to tell you--you
may despise me for not keeping such things a secret for ever. I cannot
tell whether I am right or wrong to do this. Is your love like mine?'

'I would say it was greater, if you were not so above me in all things.'

'Wilfrid, I was dying in m