abandoned the past as one might abandon the
debris of the mine.

It was delicious to him to be catechised, questioned, explored by Maud,
to have his reserve broken through and his reticence disregarded; but
what oftenest brought the great fact of his love home to him with an
overpowering certainty of joy was the girl's eager caresses and
endearing gestures. Howard had always curiously shrunk from physical
contact with his fellows; he had an almost childishly observant eye,
and his senses were abnormally alert; little bodily defects and
uglinesses had been a horror to him; and the way in which Maud would
seek his embrace, clasp his hand, lay her cheek to his, as if nestling
home, gave him an enraptured sense of delight that transcended all
experience. He was at first in these talks very tender of what he
imagined her to believe; but he found that this did not in the least
satisfy her, and he gradually opened his mind more and more to her
fearless view.

"Are you certain of nothing?" she asked him one day, half mirthfully.

"Yes, of one thing," he said, "of YOU! You are the only real and
perfect thing and thought in the world to me--I have always been alone
hitherto," he added, "and you have come near to me out of the deep--a
shining spirit!"

Howard never tired of questioning her in these days as to how her love
for him had arisen.

"That is the mystery of mysteries!" he said to her once; "what was it
in me or about me to make you care?"

Maud laughed. "Why, you might as well ask a man at a shop," she said,
"which particular coin it was that induced him to part with his
wares--it's just the price! Why, I cared for you, I think, before I
ever saw you, before I ever heard of you; one thinks--I suppose
everyone thinks--that there must be one person in the world who is
waiting for one--and it seems to me now as if I had always known it was
you; and then Jack talked about you, and then you came; and that was
enough, though I didn't dare to think you could care for me; and then
how miserable I was when you began by seeming to take an interest in
me, and then it all drifted away, and I could do nothing to hold it.
Howard, why DID you do that?"

"Oh, don't ask me, darling," he said. "I thought--I thought--I don't
know what I did think; but I somehow felt it would be like putting a
bird that had sate to sing to me into a cage, if I tried to capture
you; and yet I felt it was my only chance. I felt so old. Why you must
r