er my head as I lay pillowed on a
stone, while my comrades slumbered round the campfires, have I repeated
my prayer for Amelie de Repentigny! I had no right to indulge a hope of
winning your love; I was but a rough soldier, very practical, and not
at all imaginative. 'She would see nothing in me,' I said; and still I
would not have given up my hope for a kingdom."

"It was not so hard, after all, to win what was already yours, Pierre,
was it?" said she with a smile and a look of unutterable sweetness;
"but it was well you asked, for without asking you would be like one
possessing a treasure of gold in his field without knowing it, although
it was all the while there and all his own. But not a grain of it would
you have found without asking me, Pierre!"

"But having found it I shall never lose it again, darling!" replied he,
pressing her to his bosom.

"Never, Pierre, it is yours forever!" replied she, her voice trembling
with emotion. "Love is, I think, the treasure in heaven which rusts not,
and which no thief can steal."

"Amelie," said he after a few minutes' silence, "some say men's lives
are counted not by hours but by the succession of ideas and emotions. If
it be so, I have lived a century of happiness with you this afternoon. I
am old in love, Amelie!"

"Nay, I would not have you old in love, Pierre! Love is the perennial
youth of the soul. Grand'mere St. Pierre, who has been fifty years an
Ursuline, and has now the visions which are promised to the old in the
latter days, tells me that in heaven those who love God and one another
grow ever more youthful; the older the more beautiful! Is not that
better than the philosophers teach, Pierre?"

He drew her closer, and Amelie permitted him to impress a kiss on each
eyelid as she closed it; suddenly she started up.

"Pierre," said she, "you said you were a soldier and so practical. I
feel shame to myself for being so imaginative and so silly. I too would
be practical if I knew how. This was to be a day of business with us,
was it not, Pierre?"

"And is it not a day of business, Amelie? or are we spending it like
holiday children, wholly on pleasure? But after all, love is the
business of life, and life is the business of eternity,--we are
transacting it to-day, Amelie! I never was so seriously engaged as at
this moment, nor you either, darling; tell the truth!"

Amelie pressed her hands in his. "Never, Pierre, and yet I cannot see
the old brown woods of Be