o utterly yours: and
because I have such faith in you. You never, yet have failed.'

'Never: and it is impossible for me to conceive it,' said Alvan
thoughtfully.

His last word to her on her departure was 'Courage!' Hers to him was
conveyed by the fondest of looks. She had previously said 'To-morrow!'
to remind him of his appointment to be with her on the morrow, and
herself that she would not long stand alone. She did not doubt of her
courage while feasting on the beauty of one of the acknowledged strong
men of earth. She kissed her hand, she flung her heart to him from the
waving fingers.

CHAPTER VIII

Alvan, left to himself, had a quiet belief in the subjugation of his
tricksy Clotilde, and the inspiriting he had given her. All the rest to
come was mere business matter of the conflict, scarcely calling for a
plan of action. Who can hold her back when a woman is decided to move?
Husbands have tried it vainly, and parents; and though the husband and
the parents are not dealing with the same kind of woman, you see the
same elemental power in her under both conditions of rebel wife and
rebel daughter to break conventional laws, and be splendidly irrational.
That is, if she can be decided: in other words, aimed at a mark and
inflamed to fly the barriers intercepting. He fancied he had achieved
it. Alvan thanked his fortune that he had to treat with parents. The
consolatory sensation of a pure intent soothed his inherent wildness, in
the contemplation of the possibility that the latter might be roused
by those people, her parents, to upset his honourable ambition to win a
wife after the fashion of orderly citizens. It would be on their heads!
But why vision mischance? An old half-jesting prophecy of his among
his friends, that he would not pass his fortieth year, rose upon his
recollection without casting a shadow. Lo, the reckless prophet about to
marry!

No dark bride, no skeleton, no colourless thing, no lichened tree,
was she. Not Death, my friends, but Life, is the bride of this doomed
fortieth year! Was animation ever vivider in contrast with obstruction?
Her hair would kindle the frosty shades to a throb of vitality: it
would be sunshine in the subterranean sphere. The very thinking of
her dispersed that realm of the poison hue, and the eternally inviting
phosphorescent, still, curved forefinger, which says, 'Come.'

To think of her as his vernal bride, while the snowy Alps were a
celestial garden of