. Yet not wholly as in the past, for then often I must have
distressed and troubled you, since my pacings were too often the
outcome of restlessness and of unruly passion, while now----"

Katherine broke off, gazing at the little company gathered upon the
terrace.

"Surely they are very happy?" she said, almost involuntarily.

And he, smiling at his dear lady's incapacity of escape from her fixed
idea, replied:--

"Yes, very surely."

Katherine tied the white, lace coif she wore a little tighter beneath
her chin.

"In their happiness I renew that of my own youth," she said gently, "as
it is granted to few women, I imagine, to renew it. But I renew it with
a reverence for them; since my own happiness was plain sailing enough,
obvious, incontestable, whilst theirs is nobler, and rises to a higher
plane. For its roots, after all, are planted in very mournful fact, to
which it has risen superior, and over which it has triumphed."

But he answered, jealous of his dear lady's self-depreciation:--

"I can hardly admit that. To begin in unclouded promise of happiness,
to decline to searching and unusual experience of sorrow, and then, by
self-discipline and obedience, to attain your present altitude of
tranquillity and assurance of faith, is surely a greater trial, a
greater triumph, than to begin with difficulties, with much, I admit,
to overcome and resist, but to succeed as they are succeeding and be
granted the high land of happiness which they even now possess? They
are young, fortune smiles on them. Above all, they have one
another----"

"Ah, yes!" she said, "they have one another. Long may that last. It is
a very perfect marriage of true minds, as well as true hearts. I had,
and they have, all that love can give,"--Lady Calmady turned at the end
of the walk. "But it troubles me, as a sort of emptiness and waste,
dear Julius, that you have never had that. It pains me that you, who
possess so noble a power of disinterested and untiring friendship,
should never have enjoyed that other, and nearer relation, which
transcends friendship even as to-morrow's dawn will transcend in
loveliness the chastened restfulness of this evening's dusk."

Katherine moved onward with a certain sweet dignity of manner.

"Tell me--is she still alive, Julius, this lady whom you so loved?"

"Yes, thank God," he said.

"And you have never tried to elude that vow which--as you once told
me--you made long ago before you knew her?"