st
enough to believe that her old love for me still survives, making sweet
the secret places of her soul. Never once in all these years to have
doubted her love has been more than most marriages; but were I to live
for another ten years, and still another, I would believe in it still.
But the stars were against us. We met too late. We met when she had long
been engaged to a friend of her youth, a man noble and true, to whom she
owed much, and whom she felt it a kind of murder to desert. It was one
of those fallacious chivalries of feeling which are the danger of
sensitive and imaginative minds. Religion strengthened it, as it is so
apt to strengthen any form of self-destruction, short of technical
suicide. There was but a month to their marriage when we met. For us it
was a month of rapture and agonies, of heaven shot through with hell. I
saw further than she. I begged her at least to wait a year; but the
force of my appeal was weakened by scruples similar to her own. To rob
another of his happiness is an act from which we may well shrink, though
we can clearly see that the happiness was really destined for us, and
can never be his in any like degree. During this time I had received
from her many letters, letters such as a woman only writes in the
May-morning of her passion; and one day I received the last. There was
in it one sentence which when I read it I think my heart broke, 'Do you
believe,' it ran, 'in a love that can lie asleep, as in a trance, in
this world, to awaken again in another, a love that during centuries of
silence can still be true, and be love still in a thousand years? If you
do, go on loving me. For that is the only love I dare give you. I must
love you no more in this world.'

"Each morning as I have risen, and each night as I have turned to sleep,
those words have repeated themselves again and again in my heart, for
ten years. It was so I became the Ashton Gerard you know to-day. Since
that day, we have never met or written to each other. All I know is that
she is still alive, and still with him, and never would I disturb their
peace. When I die, I would not have her know it. If love _is_ immortal,
we shall meet again--when I am worthier to meet her. Such reunions are
either mere dreams, or they are realities to which the strongest forces
of the universe are pledged."

Henry's only comment had been to grip Gerard's hand, and give him the
sympathy of silence.

"Now," said Gerard, once more aft