in. But,
better still, he has given me his dear heart of gold in which to hide
the life of my heart forever and a day."

Katherine's words came triumphantly, more as song than as speech. She
caught the elder woman's upraised hand gently and kissed it, looking
her, meanwhile, full in the face.--"I am happy, very, very happy, best
and dearest," she said. "And it is so delicious to be happy."

"Ah, my child, my beautiful child," Mademoiselle de Mirancourt cried.

There were tears in her pretty, patient eyes. For if youth finds age
pathetic with the obvious pathos of spent body and of tired mind which
has ceased to greatly hope, how far more deeply pathetic does age, from
out its sad and settled wisdom, find poor gallant youth and all its
still unbroken trust in the beneficence of destiny, its unbroken faith
in the enchantments of earth!

Meanwhile, Julius March--product as he was of an arbitrary system of
thought and training, and by so much divorced from the natural
instincts of youth and age alike, the confident joy of the one, the
mature acquiescence of the other--in overhearing this brief
conversation suffered embarrassment amounting almost to shame. For not
only Katherine's words, but the vital gladness of her voice, the sweet
exuberance of her manner as she bent, in all her spotless bravery of
white and rose, above the elder woman's hand and kissed it, came to him
as a revelation before which he shrank with a certain fearful modesty.
Julius had read of love in the poets, of course; but, in actual fact,
he had never wooed a woman, nor heard from any woman's lips the
language of intimate devotion. The cold embraces of the Church--a
church, as he too often feared, rendered barren by schism and
heresy--were the only embraces he had ever suffered. Things read of and
things seen, moreover, are singularly different in power. And so he
trembled now at the mystery of human love, actual and concrete, here
close beside him. He was, indeed, moved to the point of losing his
habitual suavity of demeanour. He rose hastily and descended the
library steps, forgetful of the handful of chap-books, which fell in
tattered and dusty confusion upon the floor.

Katherine looked round. Until now she had been unobservant of his
presence, innocent of other audience than the old friend, to whom it
was fitting enough to confide dear secrets. For an instant she
hesitated, embarrassed too, her pride touched to annoyance, at having
laid bare