d have gone mad had I remained. The moment I heard
I could see you I returned. You will get well."

"No, no; I'm here only for a few days--a few weeks at most. I shall
never go to Italy. I shall never be your sweetheart. I'm one of God's
virgins. I belong to my saint, my first and real sweetheart. You
remember when I came to see you in the Temple Gardens, I told you
about Him then, didn't I! Ah! happy, happy aspirations, better even
than you, my darling. And He is waiting for me; I see Him now. He
smiles, and opens His arms."

"You'll get well. The sun of Italy shall be our heaven, thy lips
shall give me immortality, thy love shall give me God."

"Fine words, my sweetheart, fine words, but death waits not for
love.... Well, it's a pity to die without having loved."

"It is worse to live without having loved, dearest--dearest, you
will live."

He never saw her again. Next day she was too ill to come down, and
henceforth she grew daily weaker. Every day brought death visibly
nearer, and one day the Major came to Mike in the garden and said--

"It is all over, my poor friend!"

Then came days of white flowers and wreaths, and bouquets and baskets
of bloom, stephanotis, roses, lilies, and every white blossom that
blows; and so friends sought to cover and hide the darkness of the
grave. Mike remembered the disordered faces of the girls in church;
weeping, they threw themselves on each other's shoulders; and the
mournful chant was sung; and the procession toiled up the long hill
to the cemetery above the town, and Lily was laid there, to rest
there for ever. There she lies, facing Italy, which she never knew
but in dream. The wide country leading to Italy lies below her, the
peaks of the rocky coast, the blue sea, the gray-green olives
billowing like tides from hill to hill; the white loggias gleaming in
the sunlight. His thoughts followed the flight of the blue mountain
passes that lead so enticingly to Italy, and as he looked into the
distance, dim and faint as the dream that had gone, there rose in his
mind an even fairer land than Italy, the land of dream, where for
every one, even for Mike Fletcher, there grows some rose or lily
unattainable.

CHAPTER X

In the dreary drawing-room, amid the tattered copies of the _Graphic_
and _Illustrated London News_, he encountered the inevitable idle
woman. They engaged in conversation; and he repeated the phrases that
belong inevitably to such occasions.

"How