you?" I asked.

"Doesn't it frighten you?" he echoed. "Because you will marry. I never
shall."

"How do you know?" I catechized him.

"If I can't have the wife I want, I'll have none."

"Perhaps you can have the one you want if you ask her nicely."

"I don't intend to ask. I'm not the right one for her."

"You might let her decide that!" I nobly said, for Mrs. West may be the
woman. "I do hope, if men ever love me, they'll tell me so."

"No fear! They will." He laughed more loudly than I have heard him
laugh.

"But the right one mayn't, if he thinks as you do."

"He won't. He'll be thinking only of himself. But look here, my girl, be
sure you _do_ take the right one when you marry; for if in my opinion
you're likely to make a big mistake when the time comes, I may be
tempted to put a spoke in the fellow's wheel."

"Please do!" I laughed.

"You think I'm joking," he said, watching me in a way he has, between
narrowed lids, his eyes almost black in the twilight. "And so I am to a
certain extent. Yet I might forbid the banns, perhaps--if I chose."

"But how?"

"Haven't you any idea?"

"Not half a one."

"Then I won't tell. It would only worry you--for nothing. Marry in
peace, when your Prince comes, and I'll send you my blessing--from far
away."

"I don't like to think of your being far away," I said. "Let's not talk
of it. For you are my only friend--except Mrs. James. And you're so
different."

"I thank Heaven!" he said. "And I thank her for wanting a rest. Good as
she is, three would be a crowd in Sweetheart Abbey."

Speaking of her made me think of the time. We had promised Mrs. James to
go back in half an hour for dinner! Already more than half an hour had
slipped away as we made our air-film photographs to haunt Sweetheart
Abbey with all its other ghosts.

The twilight was changing to a light more mysterious, and as we looked
at each other through the opal haze I felt strangely that we were
changing too. It was as if our realities were less real than the shadow
pictures which were to live on here together forever--as if our bodies,
which would go away and separate, to live different lives far away from
one another, would not be _us_ any more.

I could not have imagined so wonderful a light as that which illuminated
the great rose-window and filled the vast broken shell of the Abbey. It
was as if the day had been poured out of a cup, and night was being
slowly poured in--the dove-gray night