r that it was for this that she had lived.

CHAPTER XXIV

A WOMAN'S LOVE

It seemed to him in those few golden moments of his life that memory
died away and time stood still. The past with its hideous sorrows, and
the future over which it stretched its chilling hand, were merged in the
present. Life had neither background nor prospect. The overpowering
realization of the elysium into which he had stepped had absorbed all
sense and all knowledge. They were together, and words were passing
between them which would live to eternity in his heart.

But the fairest summer sky will not be fair forever. Clouds will gather,
and drive before them the sweetness and joy from the smiling heavens,
and memory is a mistress who may slumber but who never sleeps. Those
moments of entrancing happiness, although in one sense they lasted a
lifetime, were in the ordinary measure of time but of brief duration.
For with something of the overmastering suddenness with which his
passion had found expression, there swept back into his heart all the
still cold flow of icy reminiscence. She felt his arms loosen around
her, and she raised her head, wondering, from his shoulder, wonder that
turned soon to fear, for he rose up and stood before her white, and with
a great agony in his dark eyes.

"I have been mad!" he muttered hoarsely. "Forgive me! I must go!"

She stood up by his side, pale, but with no fear or weakness in her
look. She, too, had begun to realize.

"Tell me one thing," she said softly. "You do--love me!"

"God knows I do!" he answered. The words came from his heart with a
nervous intensity which showed itself in his quivering lips, and the
vibration of his tone. She knew their truth as surely as though she had
seen them written in letters of fire, and that knowledge, or rather her
absolute confidence in it, made her in a measure bold. The dainty
exclusiveness which had half repelled, half attracted other men had
fallen away from her. She stood before him a loving tearful woman, with
something of that gentle shame which is twin sister to modesty burning
in her cheeks.

"Then I will not let you go," she said softly, taking both his hands in
hers, and holding him tightly. "Nothing shall come between us."

He looked into the love light which gleamed in her wet eyes, and
stooping down he took her again into his arms and kissed her.

"My darling!" he whispered passionately, "my darling! But you do not
know."

"Yes, I