e, if we choose to be
together. Why are you afraid?"

He felt the shudder that ran through her limbs. Close against his ear
her lips trembled over the words:

"I am afraid of losing you; of being left alone! They will try to
separate us. If they knew what we had been planning, they would plot
together so that we might not meet. You are strong, but they are
stronger, and I am in their power... Take me away, Rupert, take me now,
or it will be too late!"

He took her hand, and raised it solemnly to his lips.

"I swear to you," he said, "that I will take you. I swear that I will
be the truest and most faithful of husbands so long as God gives me
life!"

"I swear to you," she cried in response, "that I will be a true wife.
Whatever has happened, whatever may come, I swear that you shall never
regret it. I will love you; I will be your slave. Nothing, nothing can
be too much!"

They clung together in silence. The nearness, the stillness, the deep
welling of joy in the sweet human contact, were all-engrossing. Rupert
would fain have banished all difficulties into the future, and given
himself up to untrammelled enjoyment of the hour, but the urgency of
Eve's appeal forbade postponement.

He raised himself, supporting her in his arms.

"Eve! from this moment you and I are one. What belongs to one, belongs
to the other; we can have no secrets, no concealments. If there are
difficulties in our way, I must be prepared to meet them. Who is this
woman? What right has she or anyone else to dictate what you should or
should not do?"

Her eyes gazed back into his with a deep, unseeing gaze, the delicate
eyebrows creased as if in an effort of thought; then once again she
lifted her hand and pressed it against her brow. Poignantly beautiful,
poignantly sad, she sat and gave him her answer.

"I live with them," she said quietly. "They take care of me. I think--
I think I am mad!"

Rupert Dempster lost no time in questioning his hostess as to the
history of the Dream Woman who had come to fill such a real place in his
life. As soon as the guests had departed he put in a plea for a private
conversation, whereupon Mrs Melhuish seated herself on a chair at the
farther side of the lawn, and drew a long breath of mingled fatigue, and
relief.

"That's over, thank goodness! This annual garden-party to the
neighbourhood looms over me like a nightmare. I feel ten years younger
when the last carriage has driven