g to
the rushing sound of the waters.

"Because I have something to tell you which I cannot tell unless we are
going to die. You know it, but I want to say it with my own lips before
I die. I love you, John, _I love you, I love you_; and I am glad to die
because I can die with you, and go away with you."

He heard, and such was the power of her love, that his, which had been
put out of mind in the terror of that hour, reawoke and took the colour
of her own. He too forgot the imminence of death in the warm presence of
his down-trodden passion. She was in his arms as he had taken her during
the firing, and he bent his head to look at her. The moonlight played
upon her pallid, quivering face, and showed that in her eyes which no
man could look upon and turn away. Once more--yes, even then--there came
over him that feeling of utter surrender to the sweet mastery of her
will which had possessed him in the sitting-room of "The Palatial."
Only all earthly considerations having faded into nothingness now, he no
longer hesitated, but pressed his lips to hers and kissed her again and
yet again. It was perhaps as wild and pathetic a love scene as ever the
old moon above has witnessed. There they clung, those two, in the actual
shadow of death experiencing the fullest and acutest joy that our life
has to offer. Nay, death was present with them, for, beneath their very
feet, half-hidden by the water, lay the stiffening corpse of the Zulu.

To and fro swung the cart in the rush of the swollen river, up and down
beside them the carcases of the horses rose and fell with the surge of
the water, on whose surface the broken moonbeams played and quivered.
Overhead was the blue star-sown depth through which they were waiting
presently to pass, and to the right and left the long broken outlines of
the banks stretched away till at last they appeared to grow together in
the gloom.

But they heeded none of these things; they remembered nothing except
that they had found each other's hearts, and were happy with a wild joy
it is not often given to us to feel. The past was forgotten, the future
loomed at hand, and between the one and the other was spanned a bridge
of passion made perfect and sanctified by its approaching earthly end.
Bessie was forgotten, all things were forgotten, for they were alone
with Love and Death.

Let those who would blame them pause awhile. Why not? They had kept the
faith. They had denied themselves and run straigh