ed, to
die, sterile, blighting, desolating another life, too? And must we put
away offered happiness to wait on custom at our peril?--to sit cowed
before convention, juggling with death and passion?

Darkness around me, darkness in my soul, I stood staring at her where
she lay, arms bent back and small hands doubled up; and an overwhelming
rush of tenderness and apprehension drew me forward to bend above her,
hovering there, awed by the beauty of her--the pure lids, the lashes
resting on the cheeks, the red mouth so exquisitely tranquil, curled
like a scarlet petal of a flower fallen on snow.

Her love and mine! What cared we for laws that barred it?--what
mattered any law that dared attempt to link her destiny with that man
who might, perhaps, wear a title as her husband--and might not. Who
joined them? No God that I feared or worshiped. Then, why should I not
sunder a pact inspired by hell itself; and if the law of the land made
by men of the land permitted us no sanctuary in wedlock, then why did
we not seek that shelter in a happiness the law forbids, inspired by a
passion no law could forbid?

I had but to reach forward, to bend and touch her, and where was
Death's triumph if I fell at last? What vague and terrible justice
could rob us of these hours? Never, never had I loved her as I did
then. She breathed so quietly, lying there, that I could not see her
body stir; her stillness awed me, fascinated me; so still, so inert, so
marvelously motionless, that her very soul seemed asleep within her.
Should I awake her, this child whose calm, closed lids, whose soft
lashes and tinted skin, whose young soul and body were in my keeping
here under a strange roof, in a strange land?

Slowly, very slowly, a fear grew in me that took the shape of horror.
My reasoning was the reasoning of Walter Butler!--my argument his
damning creed! Dazed, shaken, I sank to my knees, overwhelmed by my own
perfidy; and she stirred in her slumber and stretched out one little
hand. All the chivalry, all the manhood in me responded to that appeal
in a passion of loyalty which swept my somber heart clean of
selfishness.

And there in the darkness I learned the lesson that she believed I had
taught to her--a lesson so easily forgotten when the heart's loud clamor
drowns all else, and every pulse throbs reckless response. And it was
cold reasoning and chill logic for cooling hot young blood--but it was
neither reason nor logic which prevailed,