an
illustration? We stand upon a low plain and gaze upon a far-off range of
hills, from the sides of which thick clouds of white mist are hanging.
Gradually, as the sun rises higher in the heavens, they float away, and
we begin dimly to see through a clearer atmosphere the yellow corn
waving on the brown hillside, the smoke rising from the lonely
farmhouse, and, if we have patience and wait still, by-and-by we can
even distinguish the brilliant patches of wild flowers, the poppies and
the cornflowers in the golden fields, and the marsh marigolds in the
meadows at the foot of the hill. It is a question of waiting long
enough. So it is with what people call mysticism in poetry."

For the first time for many months a faint color had found its way into
his wan cheeks. His face was alight with interest, and his dark eyes
shone from their deep hollows with a new, soft fire. From that moment he
assumed a new place in her thoughts. She was loath to grant it to him,
but she had no alternative. Guilty or innocent, this man had something
in him which placed him high above other men in her estimation. She felt
stirred in a manner peculiarly grateful to her. It was as though every
chord of her being had been tuned into fresh harmony; as though the hand
of a magician had lifted the curtain which had enclosed her too narrow
life, and had shown her a new world glowing with beauty and promise.
She, too, wanted to feel like that; to taste the pleasures which this
man tasted, and to feel the enthusiasm which had lit up his pale
scholarly face.

At that moment her mind was too full to harbor those dark suspicions.
With a sudden effort she threw them overboard, trampled on them, scouted
them. Was this the face and the tongue of a murderer? Surely not!

"Thank you," she said softly. "I shall like to think over what you have
said. Now I must go."

Her words seemed to bring him back to his old self. He stooped down and
picked up his cap.

"You are going back to the Court?" he asked. "Let me walk to the end of
the plantation with you."

She assented silently, and they turned along the narrow path side by
side. Below them a bracken-covered cliff, studded with dwarfed trees,
ran down to the sea; and on their left hand the black firs, larger and
growing more thickly together, shut out completely the open moorland
beyond. He had walked there before beneath a sky of darker blue, and
when there had been only stray gleams of moonlight shining t