to himself, "What
a fuss to make! What a fuss about nothing!"

To Juliet, as to Antony, they might have been at the other side of the
world. They had ceased to exist. He stood, drawn up to his full
height, gazing down into her face. She looked up, looked deep, deep
into the steady brown eyes, and read therein what she most longed to
see.

"Yes, Tony, I will. The sooner the better," answered Juliet. And, so
saying, started trustfully upon life's greatest adventure.

CHAPTER FOUR.

THE MAN WHO WAITED FOR LOVE.

Behind his tired eyes and general affectation of indifference Rupert
Dempster hid an overwhelming ambition. He longed for love--not for the
ordinary springtide passion experienced by ninety-nine men out of a
hundred; nor for the ordinary "living-prosaically-ever-after" which is
the ultimate sequel to such affairs. The desire of his heart was for
the experience of the hundredth man,--an experience as far distinguished
from the amours of the ninety-nine, as is the romance of the suburban
Algernon and Angelina, from the historic passion of a Dante and
Beatrice. Rupert searched not so much for a wife as for a mate, a woman
who should be so completely the complement of himself that to meet would
be to recognise, and after recognition life apart would become an
impossibility and a farce. In his own mind the conviction remained
unshaken that the day _would_ dawn when he should meet this dearer self,
and enter into a completeness of joy which would end but with life
itself. Yet the years passed by, and his thirty-fifth birthday came and
went, and found him no nearer his goal. Once and again as the years
passed by, Rupert awoke, breathless and panting, from a dream, the same
dream, wherein he had met his love, and they had spoken together. The
details of the dream seemed instantly to fade from his mind, leaving
behind an impression of mingled joy and pain. She had been beautiful
and sweet; he had been proud and glad, yet there had been a shadow. It
had not been all joy that he had felt as he had welcomed the
well-beloved; his emotion on awaking had been tinged with something
strangely resembling fear. But the dream-face had been fair. His
longing to meet it was but whetted by the consciousness of mystery.

He met her at last at a garden-party and gained an introduction by
accident. "Do find Lady Belcher, and bring her to have some tea," his
hostess bade him, and supplemented her request with a