y loneliness. It would not have been hard to
die, for, if I was weak in everything else, at least my love for you
would have grown to my last breath. If I speak things which I should
only prove in silence, it is that you may not afterwards judge me
hardly.'

'You shall tell me,' Wilfrid replied, 'when you are my wife. Till then I
will hear nothing but that you are and always have been mine.'

They came to a great tree about the trunk of which had been built a
circular seat. The glades on every side showed no disturbing approach.

'Let us sit here,' said Wilfrid. 'We have always talked with each other
in the open air, haven't we?'

He drew her to him and kissed her face passionately. It was the
satisfying of a hunger of years. With Beatrice his caresses had seldom
been other than playful; from the first moment of re-meeting with Emily,
he had longed to hold her to his heart.

'Can I hope to keep you now? You won't leave me again, Emily?'

'If I leave you, Wilfrid, it will be to die.'

Again he folded her in his arms, and kissed her lips, her cheeks, her
eyes. She was as weak as a trembling flower.

'Emily, I shall be in dread through every moment that parts us. Will you
consent to whatever I ask of you? Once before I would have taken you and
made you my wife, and if you had yielded we should have escaped all this
long misery. Will you now do what I wish?'

She looked at him questioningly.

'Will you marry me as soon as it can possibly be? On Monday I will do
what is necessary, and we can be married on Wednesday. This time you
will not refuse?'

'Wednesday?'

'Yes. One day only need intervene between the notice and the marriage;
it shall be at the church nearest to you.'

'Wilfrid, why do you--'

Fear had taken hold upon her she could not face the thought. Wilfrid
checked her faint words with his lips.

'I wish it,' he said, himself shaken with a tempest of passion which
whelmed the last protest of his conscience. 'I shall scarcely tear
myself from you even till then. Emily, Emily, what has my life been
without your love? Oh, you will be the angel that raises me out of the
ignoble world into which I have fallen! Hold me to you--make me feel and
believe that you have saved me! Emily, my beautiful, my goddess! let me
worship you, pray to you! Mine now, mine, love, for ever and ever!

She burst into tears, unable to suffer this new denizen of her heart,
the sure and certain hope of bliss. He kissed away t