s sister, answer for him. Ah, God wot!
brother and sister we have loved you well.... If I could keep tryst,
after all, if thou couldst make me thy wife before thou goest--or if
kindred and the Queen be too powerful, I could escape, could follow thee
as thy page, trusting thy honor ... Ah, look not so upon me! Ah, to be a
woman and do one's own wooing! Ah, think what thou wilt of me, only know
that I love thee to the uttermost!"

[Illustration: "'AH, LOOK NOT SO UPON ME!'"]

Ferne left her side, and moving to the garden wall, looked out over the
far-away downs to the far-away sea--the sea that, for weary months
had called and-thundered in his ears. Now he saw it all halcyon,
stretching fair and mute to the boundless west, the sinking sun, the
lovers' star. They two--could they two, lying with closed eyes, but
drift out over bar, floating away through golds and purples towards the
kiss of heaven and sea--flotsam of this earth, jetsam of age-distant
shores, each to the other paradise and all in all! How profound the
stillness--how deep the fragrance of the lily--what indifference, what
quiet as of scorn did the Maker of man, having placed his creature in
the lists, turn aside to other spectacles!... Should man be more careful
than his God? Right! Wrong!--to die at last and find them indeed words
of a length and the prize of sore striving a fool's bauble:--to die and
miss the rose and wine cup!--to die and find not the struggle and the
star!--to loose the glorious bird in the hand and beyond the portals to
feel no fanning of a vaster wing! What use--what use--to be at once the
fleeing Adam and the dark archangel at Eden's gates?

He turned to behold the woman whom now, with no trace of the
fancifulness, the idealism of his time, he loved with all depth,
passion, actuality; he set wrist to teeth and bit the flesh until blood
started; he moved towards her where she sat with her hands clasped above
her knee, her head thrown back, watching his coming with those deep eyes
of hers. He reached her side; she rose to meet him, and the two stood
embraced in the flattering sunshine, the odor of the lilies, the pale
glory of the failing day.

"My dear love, it is not possible," he said. "Flower of women! didst
dream that I would leave thee here blasted by my name, or that I would
carry thee where I must go? Star of my earth, to-day we say a clean
farewell!"

"Then God be with thee," she said, brokenly.

"And with thee!" he answe