u in all the world. I could not imagine anything approaching a
duplicate of you if I were to try. But, if ever I find a difficulty it
is what on earth you can see in me to love like this: in me--a battered
failure all along the line. What is it?"

"What is it?" she answered, slowly, her eyes responding to his straight,
full gaze. "What is it? I don't know. Only a little trick of
thought-reading--character-reading rather--and when I had seen you I
thought I had seen--the Deity."

"No, no, child," he said quickly and reprovingly. "You must not--to put
it on the lowest ground--pitch your ideals at such dizzy heights. Only
think what a fall it means one of these days."

"Now I could laugh. Never mind. We have just so many hours--how many
have we? And then--blank--deathlike blank."

"No--no--no! Not deathlike. It is life--life through absence. See
now, Lalante--what a sweet name that is, for I am perfectly certain
nobody else in the world bears it--I am looking at you, now in the full
glow of the sun at his best light I am looking into and photographing
your dear face--as if it needed that--so that it will remain fixed in
the retina of memory through day and night when we are apart. Those
eyes--yes, look into mine, so will it burn the picture in more
indelibly, if possible."

"Oh, love, love!" Her accents thrilled in their passionate abandonment.
"You are going away from me and you have torn my very heart out with
you. Yes, I look into your eyes, and my very first prayer is that they
may look at me in my dreams as they do now. Yes. Even parting is bliss
beside what I could imagine of dead love."

"Dead love! My Lalante, how could such a term occur as between you and
me?"

"No--no. Not as between us. My imagination was only running away with
me. That was all."

Thus they wandered on. Half unconsciously their steps turned towards a
favourite spot, where even on the hottest of days shade lay, in the
coolness reflected by a rock-face never turned to the sun, ever shadowed
by an overhanging growth. Birds piped in the brake with varying and
fantastic note, while now and again the still air was rent by the lusty
shouting of cock-koorhaans, rising fussily near and far, disturbed by
real or imaginary cause of alarm. It was an ideal place, this sheltered
nook, for such meetings as these.

Hour followed upon hour, but they heeded it not at all, as they sat and
talked; and the glance of each seemed u