fident of the result,
confident as one who loves beyond reason. Already in imagination she
fancied him returning to consciousness, not knowing that he had slept,
but waking with a gentle word just trembling upon his lips, the words
she longed to hear.

One moment more, she thought. It was good to see that light upon
his face, to fancy how that first word would sound, to feel that the
struggle was past and that there was nothing but happiness in the
future, full, overflowing, overwhelming, reaching from earth to heaven
and through time to eternity. One moment, only, before she let him
wake--it was such glory to be loved at last! Still the light was there,
still that exquisite smile was on his lips. And they would be always
there now, she thought.

At last she spoke.

"Then love, since you are mine, and I am yours, wake from the dream to
life itself--wake, not knowing that you have slept, knowing only that
you love me now and always--wake, love wake!"

She waved her delicate hand before his eyes and still resting the other
upon his shoulder, watched the returning brightness in the dark pupils
that had been glazed and fixed a moment before. And as she looked, her
own beauty grew radiant in the splendour of a joy even greater than she
had dreamed of. As it had seemed to him when he had lost himself in her
gaze, so now she also fancied that the grim, gray wilderness was full of
a soft rosy light. The place of the dead was become the place of life;
the great solitude was peopled as the whole world could never be for
her; the crumbling gravestones were turned to polished pillars in the
temple of an immortal love, and the ghostly, leafless trees blossomed
with the undying flowers of the earthly paradise.

One moment only, and then all was gone. The change came, sure, swift and
cruel. As she looked, it came, gradual, in that it passed through every
degree, but sudden also, as the fall of a fair and mighty building,
which being undermined in its foundations passes in one short minute
through the change from perfect completeness to hopeless and utter ruin.

All the radiance, all the light, all the glory were gone in an instant.
Her own supremely loving look had not vanished, her lips still parted
sweetly, as forming the word that was to answer his, and the calm
indifferent face of the waking man was already before her.

"What is it?" he asked, in his kind and passionless voice. "What were
you going to ask me, Unorna?"

I