the burning splendors of the heavens.

"Are you warm enough there?" he asked, and there was an unconscious
tenderness in his voice as he asked the question, "or shall I fetch you
a wrap?"

She smiled. "I have my hood," she said. "It is the warmest thing I ever
wear, except, of course, in winter."

Philip looked at the hood as she drew it more closely over her head, and
thought that surely no more becoming article of apparel ever was
designed for woman's wear. He had never seen anything like it either in
color or texture,--it was of a peculiarly warm, rich crimson, like the
heart of a red damask rose, and it suited the bright hair and tender,
thoughtful eyes of its owner to perfection.

"Tell me," he said, drawing a little nearer and speaking in a lower
tone, "have you forgiven me for my rudeness the first time I saw you?"

She looked a little troubled.

"Perhaps also I was rude," she said gently. "I did not know you. I
thought--"

"You were quite right," he eagerly interrupted her. "It was very
impertinent of me to ask you for your name. I should have found it out
for myself, as I _have_ done."

And he smiled at her as he said the last words with marked emphasis. She
raised her eyes wistfully.

"And you are glad?" she asked softly and with a sort of wonder in her
accents.

"Glad to know your name? glad to know _you_! Of course! Can you ask such
a question?"

"But why?" persisted Thelma. "It is not as if you were lonely,--you have
friends already. We are nothing to you. Soon you will go away, and you
will think of the Altenfjord as a dream,--and our names will be
forgotten. That is natural!"

What a foolish rush of passion filled his heart as she spoke in those
mellow, almost plaintive accents,--what wild words leaped to his lips
and what an effort it cost him to keep them hack. The heat and
impetuosity of Romeo,--whom up to the present he had been inclined to
consider a particularly stupid youth,--was now quite comprehensible to
his mind, and he, the cool, self-possessed Englishman, was ready at that
moment to outrival Juliet's lover, in his utmost excesses of amorous
folly. In spite of his self-restraint, his voice quivered a little as he
answered her--

"I shall never forget the Altenfjord or you, Miss Gueldmar. Don't you
know there are some things that cannot be forgotten? such as a sudden
glimpse of fine scenery,--a beautiful song, or a pathetic poem?" She
bent her head in assent. "And here there i