She smiled dreamily as she leaned against his breast and looked up into
his eyes.

"I cannot say it properly!" she said. "There is no language for my
heart! If I could tell you all I feel, you would think it foolish, I am
sure, because it is all so wild and strange,"--she stopped, and her face
grew pale,--"oh!" she murmured with a slight tremor; "it is terrible!"

"What is terrible, my sweet one?" asked Errington drawing her more
closely, and folding her more tightly in his arms.

She sighed deeply. "To have no more life of my own!" she answered, while
her low voice quivered with intense feeling. "It has all gone--to you!
And yours has come to me!--is it not strange and almost sad? How your
heart beats, poor boy!--I can hear it throb, throb--so fast!--here,
where I am resting my head." She looked up, and her little white hand
caressed his cheek. "Philip," she said very softly, "what are you
thinking about? Your eyes shine so brightly--do you know you have
beautiful eyes?"

"Have I?" he murmured abstractedly, looking down on that exquisite,
innocent, glowing face, and trembling with the force of the restrained
passion that kindled through him. "I don't know about that!--yours seem
to me like two stars fallen from heaven! Oh, Thelma, my darling!--God
make me worthy of you."

He spoke with intense fervor,--kissing her with a tenderness, in which
there was something of reverence as well as fear. The whole soul of the
man was startled and roused to inexpressible devotion, by the absolute
simplicity and purity of her nature--the direct frankness with which she
had said her life was his--his!--and in what way was HE fitted to be the
guardian and possessor of this white lily from the garden of God? She
was so utterly different to all women as he had known them--as different
as a bird of paradise to a common house-sparrow. Meanwhile, as these
thoughts flitted through his brain, she moved gently from his embrace
and smiled proudly, yet sweetly.

"Worthy of me?" she said softly and wonderingly. "It is I that will pray
to be made worthy of _you_! You must not put it wrongly, Philip!"

He made no answer, but looked at her as she stood before him, majestic
as a young empress in her straight, unadorned white gown.

"Thelma!" he said suddenly, "do you know how lovely you are?"

"Yes!" she answered simply; "I know it, because I am like my mother. But
it is not anything to be beautiful,--unless one is loved,--and then it
is