and almost laughable expression in the Scripture almanac
which hung on the wall at the end of her bed, and the Bible, and two or
three Sunday-school stories which, with a copy of "Jane Eyre," were the
only books that lay upon the circular mahogany table.

Once I ventured gently to chaff her about this religiosity of hers.

"But surely you believe in God, dear," she had answered, "you're not an
atheist!"

I think an atheist, with all her experience of human monsters, was for
her the depth of human depravity.

"No, dear," I had answered; "if you can believe in God, surely I can!"

I repeat that this gap in Elizabeth's psychology puzzled me, and it
puzzles me still, but it puzzled me only as the method of working out
some problem which after all had "come out right" might puzzle one. It
was only the process that was obscure. The result was gold, whatever
the dark process might be. Was it simply that Elizabeth was one of
that rare few who can touch pitch and not be defiled?--or was it, I
have sometimes wondered, an unconscious and after all a sound casuistry
that had saved Elizabeth's soul, an instinctive philosophy that taught
her, so to say, to lay a Sigurd's sword between her soul and body, and
to argue that nothing can defile the body without the consent of the
soul.

In deep natures there is always what one might call a lover's leap to
be taken by those that would love them--something one cannot understand
to be taken on trust, something even that one fears to be gladly
adventured ... all this, and more, I knew that I could safely venture
for Elizabeth's sake, ere I kissed her white brow and stole away in the
early hours of that winter's morning.

As I did so I had taken one of the sumptuous strands of her hair into
my hand and kissed it too.

"Promise me to let this come back to its own beautiful colour," I had
said, as I nodded to a little phial labelled "Peroxide of Hydrogen" on
her mantelshelf.

"Would you like to?" she had said.

"Yes, do it for me."

One day some months after I cut from her dear head one long thick lock,
one half of which was gold and the other half chestnut. I take it out
and look at it as I write, and, as when I first cut it, it seems still
a symbol of Elizabeth's life, the sun and the shadow, only that the
gold was the shadow, and the chestnut was the sun.

The time came when the locks, from crown to tip, were all chestnut--but
when it came I would have given the world for them