of her life. For twenty years that sad and beautiful face haunted me,
and it haunts me yet athwart life and death. Other women have loved me
and I have known other partings, some of them more terrible, but the
memory of this woman as she was then, and of her farewell look, overruns
them all. Whenever I gaze down the past I see this picture framed in it
and I know that it is one which cannot fade. Are there any sorrows like
these sorrows of our youth? Can any bitterness equal the bitterness of
such good-byes? I know but one of which I was fated to taste in after
years, and that shall be told of in its place. It is a common jest to
mock at early love, but if it be real, if it be something more than the
mere arising of the passions, early love is late love also; it is love
for ever, the best and worst event which can befall a man or woman. I
say it who am old and who have done with everything, and it is true.

One thing I have forgotten. As we kissed and clung in our despair
behind the bole of the great beech, Lily drew a ring from her finger
and pressed it into my hand saying, 'Look on this each morning when you
wake, and think of me.' It had been her mother's, and to-day it still
is set upon my withered hand, gleaming in the winter sunlight as I trace
these words. Through the long years of wild adventure, through all the
time of after peace, in love and war, in the shine of the camp fire,
in the glare of the sacrificial flame, in the light of lonely stars
illumining the lonely wilderness, that ring has shone upon my hand,
reminding me always of her who gave it, and on this hand it shall go
down into the grave. It is a plain circlet of thick gold, somewhat worn
now, a posy-ring, and on its inner surface is cut this quaint couplet:

Heart to heart, Though far apart.

A fitting motto for us indeed, and one that has its meaning to this
hour.

That same day of our farewell I rode with my father to Yarmouth. My
brother Geoffrey did not come with us, but we parted with kindly words,
and of this I am glad, for we never saw each other again. No more was
said between us as to Lily Bozard and our wooing of her, though I knew
well enough that so soon as my back was turned he would try to take my
place at her side, as indeed happened. I forgive it to him; in truth I
cannot blame him much, for what man is there that would not have desired
to wed Lily who knew her? Once we were dear friends, Geoffrey and I, but
when we ripened