ds among the gold
Shine upon my brow to-day;
Life is fading fast away.
But, my darling, you will be
Always young and fair to me."

Outside the leaves rustled, the birds called and the crickets sang their
unending epithalamia of summer nights, and on this tone-background the
melody rose tenderly and lingeringly like a haunting perfume of pressed
flowers. She smiled and lifted the locket to her face, whispering the
words of the refrain:

"Yes, my darling, you will be
Always young and fair to me!"

The smile was still on her lips when she fell asleep, and the little
locket still lay in her fingers.

CHAPTER XLVII

WHEN THE CLOCK STRUCK

"Sorrow weeps--sorrow sings." As Shirley played that night, the old
Russian proverb kept running through her mind. When she had pushed the
gold harp into its corner she threw herself upon a broad sofa in a
feathery drift of chintz cushions and dropped her forehead in her laced
fingers. A gilt-framed mirror hung on the opposite wall, out of which
her sorrowful brooding eyes looked with an expression of dumb and weary
suffering.

Her confused thoughts raced hither and thither. What would be the end?
Would Valiant forget after a time? Would he marry--Miss Fargo, perhaps?
The thought caused her a stab of anguish. Yet she herself could not
marry him. The barrier was impassable!

She was still lying listlessly among the cushions when a step sounded on
the porch and she heard Chilly Lusk's voice in the hall. With heavy
hands Shirley put into place her disheveled hair and rose to meet him.

"I'm awfully selfish to come to-night," he said awkwardly; "no doubt you
are tired out."

She disclaimed the weariness that dragged upon her spirits like leaden
weights, and made him welcome with her usual cordiality. She was, in
fact, relieved at his coming. At Damory Court, the night of the ball,
when she had come from the garden with her lips thrilling from Valiant's
kiss, she had suddenly met his look. It had seemed to hold a startled
realization that she had remembered with a remorseful compunction. Since
that night he had not been at Rosewood.

Ranston had lighted a pine-knot in the fireplace, and the walls were
shuddering with crimson shadows. Her hand was shielding her eyes, and as
she strove to fill the gaps in their somewhat spasmodic conversation
with the trivial impersonal things that belonged to their old intimacy,
the tiny flickering flames