had
Beatrice's foot been on the threshold, she would not have been driven
away by fear. But the fight had begun.

"Speak to me, dear," she said. "I must hear your voice--it makes me know
that it is all real."

"How the minutes fly!" he exclaimed, smoothing her hair with his hand.
"It seems to me that I was but just speaking when you spoke."

"It seems so long--" She checked herself, wondering whether an hour had
passed or but a second.

Though love be swifter than the fleeting hours, doubt can outrun a
lifetime in one beating of the heart.

"Then how divinely long it all may seem," he answered. "But can we not
begin to think, and to make plans for to-morrow, and the next day, and
for the years before us? That will make more time for us, for with the
present we shall have the future, too. No--that is foolish again. And
yet it is so hard to say which I would have. Shall the moment linger
because it is so sweet? Or shall it be gone quickly, because the next is
to be sweeter still? Love, where is your father?"

Unorna started. The question was suggested, perhaps, by his inclination
to speak of what was to be done, but it fell suddenly upon her ears, as
a peal of thunder when the sky has no clouds. Must she lie now, or break
the spell? One word, at least, she could yet speak with truth.

"Dead."

"Dead!" the Wanderer repeated, thoughtfully and with a faint surprise.
"Is it long ago, beloved?" he asked presently, in a subdued tone as
though fearing to wake some painful memory.

"Yes," she answered. The great doubt was taking her heart in its strong
hands now and tearing it, and twisting it.

"And whose house is this in which I have found you, darling? Was it
his?"

"It is mine," Unorna said.

How long would he ask questions to which she could find true answers?
What question would come next? There were so many he might ask and few
to which she could reply so truthfully even in that narrow sense of
truth which found its only meaning in a whim of chance. But for a moment
he asked nothing more.

"Not mine," she said. "It is yours. You cannot take me and yet call
anything mine."

"Ours, then, beloved. What does it matter? So he died long ago--poor
man! And yet, it seems but a little while since some one told me--but
that was a mistake, of course. He did not know. How many years may it
be, dear one? I see you still wear mourning for him."

"No--that was but a fancy--to-day. He died--he died more than two years