; it was glorious. The heavy clouds which a couple of hours
before had been rolling like celestial hearses across the azure deeps
were now aflame with glory. Some of them glowed like huge castles
wrapped in fire, others with the dull red heat of burning coal. The
eastern heaven was one sheet of burnished gold that slowly grew to red,
and higher yet to orange and the faintest rose. To the left departing
sunbeams rested lovingly on grey Quathlamba's crests, even firing the
eternal snows that lay upon his highest peak, and writing once more upon
their whiteness the record of another day fulfilled. Lower down the sky
floated little clouds, flame-flakes fallen from the burning mass above,
and on the earth beneath lay great depths of shadow barred with the
brightness of the dying light.

John stood and gazed at it, and its living, glowing beauty seemed to
fire his imagination, as it fired earth and heaven, in such sort that
the torch of love lit upon his heart like the sunbeams on the mountain
tops. Then from the celestial beauty of the skies he turned to look at
the earthly beauty of the woman who sat there before him, and found
that also fair. Whether it was the contemplation of the glories of
Nature--for there is always a suspicion of melancholy in beautiful
things--or whatever it was, her face had a touch of sadness on it that
he had never seen before, and which certainly added to its charm as a
shadow adds to the charm of the light.

"What are you thinking of, Bessie?" he asked.

She looked up, and he saw that her lips were quivering a little. "Well,
do you know," she said, "oddly enough, I was thinking of my mother. I
can only just recall her, a woman with a thin, sweet face. I remember
one evening she was sitting in front of a house while the sun was
setting as it is now, and I was playing by her, when suddenly she
called me to her and kissed me, then pointed to the red clouds that were
gathered in the sky, and said, 'I wonder if you will ever think of
me, dear, when I have passed through those golden gates?' I did not
understand what she meant, but somehow I have remembered the words, and
though she died so long ago, I do often think of her;" and two large
tears rolled down her face as she spoke.

Few men can bear to see a sweet and pretty woman in tears, and this
little incident was too much for John, whose caution and doubts all went
to the winds together.

"Bessie," he said, "don't cry, dear; please, don't! I