d great
things to speak to the people through you.'

There she stopped. The fervour she repressed in speech threw a glow over
her face, like that on a frosty bare autumn sky after sunset.

I pressed my lips to her hand.

In our silence another of the fatal yellow volumes thumped the floor.

She looked into my eyes and asked,

'Have we been speaking before a witness?'

So thoroughly had she renovated me, that I accused and reproved the
lurking suspicion with a soft laugh.

'Beloved! I wish we had been.'

'If it might be,' she said, divining me and musing.

'Why not?'

She stared.

'How? What do you ask?'

The look on my face alarmed her. I was breathless and colourless,
with the heart of a hawk eyeing his bird--a fox, would be the truer
comparison, but the bird was noble, not one that cowered. Her beauty and
courage lifted me into high air, in spite of myself, and it was a huge
weight of greed that fell away from me when I said,

'I would not urge it for an instant. Consider--if you had just plighted
your hand in mine before a witness!'

'My hand is in yours; my word to you is enough.'

'Enough. My thanks to heaven for it! But consider--a pledge of fidelity
that should be my secret angel about me in trouble and trial; my wedded
soul! She cannot falter, she is mine for ever, she guides me, holds me
to work, inspirits me!--she is secure from temptation, from threats,
from everything--nothing can touch, nothing move her, she is mine! I
mean, an attested word, a form, that is--a betrothal. For me to
say--my beloved and my betrothed! You hear that? Beloved! is a lonely
word:--betrothed! carries us joined up to death. Would you?--I do but
ask to know that you would. To-morrow I am loose in the world, and there
's a darkness in the thought of it almost too terrible. Would you?--one
sworn word that gives me my bride, let men do what they may! I go then
singing to battle--sure!--Remember, it is but the question whether you
would.'

'Harry, I would, and will,' she said, her lips shuddering--'wait'--for
a cry of joy escaped me--'I will look you me in the eyes and tell me you
have a doubt of me.'

I looked: she swam in a mist.

We had our full draught of the divine self-oblivion which floated
those ghosts of the two immortal lovers through the bounds of their
purgatorial circle, and for us to whom the minutes were ages, as for
them to whom all time was unmarked, the power of supreme love swept
out circumstan