l known. Do you
not think, during the long hours of that night,--remember how new it
was to her to be so worshipped and wanted,--do you not think her
courage failed her? She feared she might come short of what eventually
you would need in the face and figure always opposite you at your
table; and, despite her own great love and yours, she thought it wisest
to avoid future disillusion by rejecting present joy. Her very love for
you would have armed her to this decision."

The silent figure opposite nodded, and waited with clasped hands.
Deryck was pleading her cause better than she could have pleaded it
herself.

Silence in the woods. All nature seemed to hush and listen for the
answer.

Then:--"No," said Garth's young voice unhesitatingly. "In that case she
would have told me her fear, and I should have reassured her
immediately. Your suggestion is unworthy of my beloved."

The wind sighed in the trees. A cloud passed before the sun. The two
who sat in darkness, shivered and were silent.

Then the doctor spoke. "My dear boy," he said, and a deep tenderness
was in his voice: "I must maintain my unalterable belief that to the
One Woman you are still the One Man. In your blindness her rightful
place is by your side. Perhaps even now she is yearning to be here.
Will you tell me her name, and give me leave to seek her out, hear from
herself her version of the story; and, if it be as I think, bring her
to you, to prove, in your affliction, her love and tenderness?"

"Never!" said Garth. "Never, while life shall last! Can you not see
that if when I had sight, and fame, and all heart could desire, I could
not win her love, what she might feel for me now, in my helpless
blindness, could be but pity? And pity from her I could never accept.
If I was 'a mere boy' three years ago, I am 'a mere blind man' now, an
object for kind commiseration. If indeed you are right, and she
mistrusted my love and my fidelity, it is now out of my power forever
to prove her wrong and to prove myself faithful. But I will not allow
the vision of my beloved to be dimmed by these suggestions. For her
completion, she needed so much more than I could give. She refused me
because I was not fully worthy. I prefer it should be so. Let us leave
it at that."

"It leaves you to loneliness," said the doctor sadly.

"I prefer loneliness," replied Garth's young voice, "to disillusion.
Hark! I hear the first gong, Brand. Margery will be grieved if we keep