e as the blackness of storm-clouds in the
sweep of the clear west wind; gone as the shadow of evil before the face
of an angel of light! And I know it all. I see it all in your eyes.
You knew I was true, and you knew I sought you, and would find you at
last--and you have waited--and there has been no other, not the thought
of another, not the passing image of another between us. For I know
there has not been that and I should have known it anywhere in all these
years, the chill of it would have found me, the sharpness of it would
have been in my heart--no matter where, no matter how far--yet say it,
say it once--say that you have loved me, too--"

"God knows how I have loved you--how I love you now!" Unorna said in a
low, unsteady voice.

The light that had been in his face grew brighter still as she spoke,
while she looked at him, wondering, her head thrown back against the
high chair, her eyelids wet and drooping, her lips still parted, her
hand in his. Small wonder if he had loved her for herself, she was so
beautiful. Small wonder it would have been if she had taken Beatrice's
place in his heart during those weeks of close and daily converse.
But that first great love had left no fertile ground in which to plant
another seed, no warmth of kindness under which the tender shoot might
grow to strength, no room beneath its heaven for other branches than its
own. Alone it had stood in majesty as a lordly tree, straight, tall, and
ever green, on a silent mountain top. Alone it had borne the burden
of grief's heavy snows; unbent, for all its loneliness, it had stood
against the raging tempest; and green still, in all its giant strength
of stem and branch, in all its kingly robe of unwithered foliage.
Unscathed, unshaken, it yet stood. Neither storm nor lightning, wind
nor rain, sun nor snow had prevailed against it to dry it up and cast it
down that another might grow in its place.

Yet this love was not for her to whom he spoke, and she knew it as she
answered him, though she answered truly, from the fulness of her heart.
She had cast an enchantment over him unwittingly, and she was taken in
the toils of her own magic even as she had sworn that she would never
again put forth her powers. She shuddered as she realised it all. In a
few short moments she had felt his kisses, and heard his words, and been
clasped to his heart, as she had many a time madly hoped. But in those
moments, too, she had known the truth of her woma