alcott expressed great surprise. "Pardon me, Mr. Darrell, for referring
to the matter. I had heard something regarding the peculiar nature of
your malady, but I had no idea it was so marked as that. Is it possible
that you have no recollection of that affair?"

"None whatever," Darrell answered, briefly, as though he did not care to
discuss the matter.

"How strange! One would naturally have supposed that anything so
terrible, so shocking to the sensibilities, would have left an
impression on your mind never to have been effaced! But I fear the
subject is unpleasant to you, Mr. Darrell; pardon me for having alluded
to it."

The conversation turned, but Darrell could not banish the subject from
his thoughts. Kate had often spoken to him of her cousin, but never as a
lover. He recalled his portrait at The Pines; the frank, boyish face
with its winning smile--a bonnie lover surely! Had she, or had she not,
he wondered, learned to reciprocate his love before the tragic ending
came? And if not, did she now regret it?

He watched her that evening, fearing to broach a subject so delicate,
but pondering long and deeply, till at last she rallied him on his
unusual seriousness, and he told her what he had heard.

"Yes," she said, in reply; "Harry loved me, or thought he did; though he
was like the others--he did not understand me any better than they. But
he had always been just like a brother to me, and I could never have
loved him in any other way, and I told him so. Papa said I would learn
in time, and I think perhaps he would have insisted upon it if Harry had
lived. I was sorry I couldn't care for him as he wished; he thought I
would after a while, but I never could, for I think that kind of love is
far different from all others; don't you, Mr. Darrell?"

And Darrell, looking from the mountain-side where they were standing out
into the deep blue spaces where the stars, one by one, were gliding into
sight, answered, reverently,--

"As far above all others 'as the heaven is high above the earth.'"

To him at that instant love--the love that should exist between two who,
out of earth's millions, have chosen each the other--seemed something as
yet remote; a sacred temple whose golden dome, like some mystic shrine,
gleamed from afar, but into which he might some day enter; unaware that
he already stood within its outer court.

_Chapter XV_

THE AWAKENING

As Darrell was returning home one evening, some ten da