s a subconscious
observation which did not recall me to myself and the present.

Back, back turned my thoughts to the past.

Here, where she now lay in her gorgeous tomb, had then stood an arbor,
and below had roared the rushing river.

It was the night of our wedding.

Then, as now, on this very spot, I had looked down on that fair pale
face, and then it had given me back a gaze as lifeless as this.

I had missed my bride from the little throng in the quaint house
beyond. I had stolen out to seek her. Instinctively I had turned to
the old arbor above the river, where her hours of meditation had
always been passed.

It was there I had found her as a child, when I came to bring her
father's dying message. It was there I had asked her to become my
wife. It was there we three had first stood together.

For a week before the wedding she had been in a strange mood,
tearless, but nervous, and sad! Still, it had not seemed to me an
unnatural mood in such a woman, on the eve of her marriage.

Fate is ironical.

I remembered that I was serenely happy as I sped up the hill in search
of her, and so sure that I knew where to find her. Light scudding
clouds crossed the track of the moon, which, with a broadly smiling
face, rolled up the heavens at a spinning pace, now appearing, now
disappearing behind the flying clouds.

I was humming gaily as I strode along the narrow path. Nothing tugged
at my heart strings to warn me of approaching sorrow. There was no
signal in all nature to prepare me for the end in a complete shipwreck
of all my dreams. The peace about me gave no hint of its cynicism.
Nothing, either within or without, hinted that my hours of happiness
and content were running out rapidly to the last sand!

I had reached the shallow steps that led up the knoll to the arbor!

At that moment the clouds were swept off from the face of the moon,
and the white light fell full on her.

But she was not alone. She rested in the arms of my friend, as, God
help me, she had never rested in mine--in an abandon that was only too
eloquent.

What was said?

Who but God knows that now?

What do men like us, who have thought themselves one in all things,
until one love rends them asunder, say at such a time? As for me, I
cannot recall a word!

I did not even see his face.

I think he saw mine no more.

We seemed to see into the soul of each other, through the very heart
of that frail woman between us, that slender cr