hall. I gave you up when I saw
the renunciation to be inevitable, but I knew then, as I know now,
that I can never put any other in your place. You were the love of my
youth, and you will be the love of my old age, if my lonely life goes
on till then. Don't turn from me. Don't hide your face like that. I
ask nothing but this sacred right to speak. I know you never loved
me. I know it is not in me--if, indeed, it be in any mortal man--to
enter into the heaven of being loved by you. But, at least, you have
been the vision in my life--the sacred manifestation of what girl and
sweetheart and woman and wife might be--and for that I thank you. In
the shadow of that beatific vision I shall walk henceforth, and
believe me when I say that I shall walk there alone."

Bettina, with her face buried in her hands, remained profoundly
still. When he had waited a moment he began to fear that he had
overtaxed her strength too far, and that she might have fainted.

Kneeling in front of her, he took her two wrists gently in his hands
and tried to draw them away from her eyes. The strong resistance that
she made to this gave evidence enough that she was conscious in every
sentient nerve.

"Forgive me," he said; "I am going--I have been wrong to force all
this upon you--but it is the last time that we shall meet. Let me, I
pray you, see your face once more before I turn away from it
forever."

The tense hands relaxed within his grasp, but he caught no more than
a second's glimpse of the beautiful face before it was hid against
his shoulder.

At the same instant a low voice whispered in his ear:

"Don't move until I speak to you."

Overwhelmed with wonder, he felt the hands which he had grasped now
holding fast his own, that she might compel him to the stillness
which she had commanded. Then the soft voice at his ear went on:

"You were right in saying that I did not love you--that you would
have urged me into a marriage to which I could not have brought the
true feeling. I did not know it then, but I know it now. And I know
it now because--because--" her voice trembled and her breath came
quick--"because now I do love you. Oh, Horace, better love than this
man could not have or woman give."

She ended in a burst of tears, and her exhausted body leaned against
him for support.

For a moment he felt an amazement so overwhelming that he seemed half
unconscious from the whirling in his brain. Then, as a lightning
flash lights up t