ath would part them; he knew that, holding
her closer, looking down into her face.

What a pale little face it was! Through the intensest heat of his
passion the sting touched him: it was but one mark of his murderous
selfishness. Some instinct made her glance up at him, as he thought
this, with a keen insight, and she lifted her head from his breast, and
when he stooped to touch her lips, shook herself free, laughing
carelessly. Their whole life was before them to taste happiness, and she
had a mind they should taste it drop by drop. Alas, Stephen Holmes! you
will have little time for morbid questionings in those years to come:
your very pauses of silent content and love will be rare and
well-earned. No more tranced raptures for to-night,--let tomorrow bring
what it would.

"You do not seem to find your purer self altogether perfect?" she
demanded. "I think the pale skin hurts your artistic eye, or the frozen
eyes,--which is it?"

"They have thawed into brilliant fire,--something looks at me
half-yielding and half-defiant,--you know that, you vain child! But,
Margaret, nothing can atone"--

He stopped.

"That is right, Stephen. Remorse grows maudlin when it goes into words,"
laughing again at his astounded look.

He took her hand,--a dewy, healthy hand,--the very touch of it meant
action and life.

"What if I say, then," he said, earnestly, "that I do not find my angel
perfect, be the fault mine or hers? The child Margaret, with her sudden
tears and laughter and angry heats, is gone,--I killed her, I
think,--gone long ago. I will not take in place of her this worn, pale
ghost, who wears clothes as chilly as if she came from the dead, and
stands alone, as ghosts do."

She stood a little way off, her great brown eyes flashing with tears. It
was so strange a joy to find herself cared for, when she had believed
she was old and hard: the very idle jesting made her youth and happiness
real to her. Holmes saw that with his quick tact. He flung playfully a
crimson shawl that lay there about her white neck.

"My wife must suffer her life to flush out in gleams of color and light:
her cheeks must hint at a glow within, as yours do now. I will have no
hard angles, no pallor, no uncertain memory of pain in her life: it
shall be perpetual summer."

He loosened her hair, and it rolled down about the bright, tearful face,
shining in the red fire-light like a mist of tawny gold.

"I need warmth and freshness and light: