fell round her closely,
edged with silver that seemed like moonlight on white clouds, and
there was a little silver on her shoulders and round the breast that
seemed like moonlight upon snow. Her fair hair shone in the blaze of
light, her face raised to mine was pale and smiling, with a wonderful
lustre in the azure eyes.

She seemed, as ever, the dream, the vision, the ideal, the
unattainable divinity man's soul continually strives after.

A moment more and she was in my arms. Her physical semblance was mine,
in which her spirit walked and moved, and I was the owner and
conqueror of that at least.

"Trevor dear, be gentle!" she murmured in laughing remonstrance, but
her white arms did not unlock from my neck nor her soft lips move far
from mine.

"How happy I am now," she said, sinking into my embrace, "and how well
you look, Trevor, how splendid! So strong and gloriously full of
life!"

"I wonder I do," I answered, "after this cruel year you gave me. How
could you leave me as you did while I was asleep beside you, and what
was your reason? You will have to tell me now."

"I believe you would be happier if I did not, if you just trusted me
and never asked to know," she answered, smiling back at me. "Are we
not perfectly happy now? You have me again; look at me, am I just the
same as when we parted?"

I looked at her intently, eagerly, my eyes drinking in all the perfect
vision before me, each slim outline of the body, lying back now on the
couch where we both were sitting, all the delicacy of the transparent
skin, the smooth white forehead with its fine, straight-drawn
eyebrows, the lovely eyes searching mine. Yes, I had lost nothing of
my possession, and there seemed rather something added to that inner
light and that wonderful look of intellect and power that shone
through the face.

"I think you are the same," I said slowly, seeking vainly to express
that indefinable extra light that seemed upon her face.

"Only perhaps more lovely. But tell me what your reason was. I cannot
bear to think there is a dark gap between us."

"You are so happy at this moment it seems a pity," she murmured
softly. "You will not feel so happy when you know, and it's all over
and past and forgotten. It's a thunderstorm that has rolled by and
left us again in the sunlight. We are in Paradise now, are we not?"

I looked at her, and the triumph of delighted joy I had in her rose up
to my brain, filling it, making all else seem