supposed
your religion held you wholly, and that you pitied us as the wise pity
the foolish, standing above them, looking down. Richard told me many
things about you, before he brought me home here, but he never told me
this."

"Richard never knew it," he answered, smiling. Her perfect
unconsciousness at once calmed and pained him. He had kept his secret,
all these years, only too well.

Katherine turned and began to pace again, her hands clasped behind her
back.

"But, tell me--tell me," she said. "You can trust me, you know. I will
never speak of this unless you speak. But if I knew, it would bring us
nearer together, and that would be comforting, perhaps, to us both.
Tell me, what happened? Did she know, and did she love you? She must
have loved you, I think. Then what separated you? Did she die?"

"No, thank God, she did not die," Julius said. He paused. He longed to
gain the relief of fuller confession, yet feared to betray himself. "I
believe she loved me truly as a friend--and that was sufficient."

"Oh no, no!" Katherine cried. "Do not decline upon sophistries. That is
never sufficient."

"In one sense, yes--in another sense, no," Julius said. "It was thus. I
loved her exactly as she was. Had she loved me as I loved her she would
have become other than she was."

"Ah! but surely you are too ingenious, too fastidious." Katherine's
voice took tones of delicate remonstrance and pleading. "That would be
your danger, in such a case. _Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien_, and you
would always risk sacrificing the real to the ideal. I am sorry. I
would like you to have tasted the fulness of life. Even though the days
of perfect joy are very few, it is well to have had them----"

She threw back her head, her eyebrows drew together, and her face
darkened somewhat.

"Yes, it is well to have had them, though the memory of them cuts one
to the very quick."--Then her manner changed again, gaining a touch of
gaiety. "Really I am very unselfish in wishing all this otherwise," she
said, "for it would have been a sore trial to part with you. I cannot
imagine Brockhurst without you. I should have been in great straits
deprived of my friend and counselor. And yet, I would like you to have
been very happy, dear Julius."

Their pacing had just brought them to the arched doorway of the chapel.
Katherine stopped, and raising her arm leaned her hand against the
stone jamb of it above her head.

"See," she went on, "I want to