at cankers
love--bury them all, together, in one wide deep grave--then build on it
the house of what we are--"

"Change? Indifference? I do not know those words," the Wanderer said.
"Have they been in your dreams, love? They have never been in mine."

He spoke tenderly, but with the faintest echo of sadness in his voice.
The mere suggestion that such thoughts could have been near her was
enough to pain him. She was silent, and again her head lay upon his
shoulder. She found there still the rest and the peace. Knowing her own
life, the immensity of his faith and trust in that other woman were made
clear by the simple, heartfelt words. If she had been indeed Beatrice,
would he have loved her so? If it had all been true, the parting, the
seven years' separation, the utter loneliness, the hopelessness, the
despair, could she have been as true as he? In the stillness that
followed she asked herself the question which was so near a greater and
a deadlier one. But the answer came quickly. That, at least, she could
have done. She could have been true to him, even to death. It must be so
easy to be faithful when life was but one faith. In that chord at least
no note rang false.

"Change in love--indifference to you!" she cried, all at once, hiding
her lovely face in his breast and twining her arms about his neck. "No,
no! I never meant that such things could be--they are but empty words,
words one hears spoken lightly by lips that never spoke the truth, by
men and women who never had such truth to speak as you and I."

"And as for old age," he said, dwelling upon her speech, "what is that
to us? Let it come, since come it must. It is good to be young and fair
and strong, but would not you or I give up all that for love's sake,
each of us of our own free will, rather than lose the other's love?"

"Indeed, indeed I would!" Unorna answered.

"Then what of age? What is it after all? A few gray hairs, a wrinkle
here and there, a slower step, perhaps a dimmer glance. That is all
it is--the quiet, sunny channel between the sea of earthly joy and the
ocean of heavenly happiness. The breeze of love still fills the sails,
wafting us softly onward through the narrows, never failing, though it
be softer and softer, till we glide out, scarce knowing it, upon the
broader water and are borne swiftly away from the lost land by the first
breath of heaven."

His words brought peace and the mirage of a far-off rest, that soothed
again the