And perfect love and friendship reign
Through all eternity!

Love, through all eternity!

"Do I love her?" he was asking himself, and the very question seemed an affirmation.

"You didn't sing?" Elizabeth said, when they were alone under the stars.

"No," he said shortly. She was startled at his tone, and looked at him anxiously, but without a question. (This habit of hers of waiting silently was, although she did not know it, a most insistent and inescapable question.) "Elizabeth," he said hoarsely, "it has just come to me -I- Listen! What should I have done without you all these years? Do you-do you understand?"

It seemed to Elizabeth Sayre as though for one instant her heart stood still. But the pause between Oliver's words and her answer was scarcely noticeable.

"It has been a great privilege to me," she said, with a breath as though her throat contracted; "it is a great happiness to have helped you in any way. It is my love for Alice that has helped you.

"Alice!"

Oliver made no answer. They walked on, Elizabeth knowing that her hand trembled on his arm, and feeling still that clutch upon her throat.

IV.

'Why, Lizzie, aren't you going to stop a minute? Aren't you going to sit down?"

Elizabeth stood on the threshold of the parlor, her hand on the door knob. Through her mother's words, she was listening to Oliver Hamilton's step as he went up to his studio. Mr. Hamilton had left her at the front door, and gone at once to his rooms, instead of stopping as usual for a chat with Mrs. Sayre. The rest of their walk home, after that word "Alice," had been full of forced and idle talk, which covered the shocked silence of their thoughts.

Mrs. Sayre's voice now seemed to her daughter like a stone flung into a still pool, which shattered the silence, and let loose a clamorous repetition of this strange thing Oliver had said, or

rather this terrible thing he had left unsaid. Elizabeth leaned against the door, holding the knob in a nervous grip.

"Come, child, sit down and tell us about the sermon," Mrs. Sayre commanded her, cheerily.

66

“No,” Elizabeth said, "I only stopped to say good night. I-I am rather tired."

66

Why, what's happened to Oliver?" said Mrs. Sayre. "Why doesn't he come in a minute? Have you and Elizabeth quarreled, Oliver?" she called out good-naturedly, thinking him still in the hall.

Elizabeth turned abruptly.

"Good night," she said, and a moment later they heard her light step on the stairs.

Her mother and aunt looked at each other.

"I believe they have quarreled, Susy. Why, she didn't kiss us good night, said Mrs. Sayre, in rather an awed voice.

Elizabeth, in the darkness of her bedroom, stood still in the middle of the floor, her fingers pressed hard upon her eyes; her heart beating so that she could hardly breathe. The white crape shawl slipped from her shoulders, and fell like a curve of foam about her feet. The light from the street lamp, which flared in an iron bracket on the corner of No. 16, traveled across the worn carpet, and showed the spare, old-fashioned furnishing of the room; it struck a faint sparkle from the misty surface of the old mirror, and it gleamed along the edge of a little gilt photograph frame that was standing on the dressing table. Elizabeth, shivering a little, the soft color deepening in her cheeks, and her eyelashes glittering with tears, saw the flickering gleam, and, with a sudden impulse, lifted the photograph, holding it close to her eyes and staring at it in the darkness. But the light from the lamp in the court was too faint to show the face. With an unsteady hand she struck a match and lit her candle. She had forgotten to take off her bonnet; she stood, the light flaring up into her face, looking with blurred eyes at Alice's picture. At last, with a long sigh, she kissed it gently and put it again on the table. Then she sat down on the edge of her bed, staring straight before her at the candle, burning steadily in the hot, still night; her hands were clasped tightly upon her knees. It was long after that it must have been nearly midnight that Mrs. Sayre heard a step in her bedroom, and said, with

a start:

"What is it? Is that you, 'Liz'beth?"

"Yes, mother dear. I-I wanted to kiss you; I wanted -you!"

Mrs. Sayre gathered the slender figure down into her arms. "Why, 'Liz'beth! Why, my precious child! Are you sick, my darling?"

"No, no," she answered, a thrill of comfort in her voice; "only I didn't kiss you good night. I oughtn't to have wakened you. Good night, mother darling."

"But, Lizzie,” said the tender old voice, "something troubles you, my precious child. Did Oliver She felt the instant stiffening of the arms about her, and her daughter drew herself away.

"There's nothing the matter, mother dear," she said, her breathless voice quivering into calmness. "You will go to sleep now, won't you? I ought not to have disturbed you." And she had gone.

Mrs. Sayre sighed. "I wish I could learn not to speak about him," she thought. "Yet if she would only tell me!"

But nothing could have been more impossible. Alas for those natures that cannot give their sorrow to another! Elizabeth longed for sympathy and comfort, yet she knew not how to open her heart to receive it. Such natures suffer infinitely more than those happier souls whose pain rushes to their lips.

Elizabeth's struggle with herself had ended when she sought her mother; she knew what she must do. She said to herself with exultation that she loved Oliver with all her soul; loved him enough to help him to be true to himself. He had told her, oh, how often, in those earlier days, that to him marriage was for eternity as well as time; that Love, from its very nature, could not be untrue, and so there could be but one love in a life. "If a second comes," he used to say, "either it is an impostor, or the first was; either the first marriage was not sacred, or the second will not be!" She remembered how she had heard him say once of a man who had suffered as he had suffered "No, his living is over; he can remember, but he cannot live again. If he dares to try, life will be ashes in his mouth!"

Should she let him try? Should she let him think that his love for Alice was not love, or his love for her was disloyalty to Alice? How plain, how easy, was the answer, just because she loved him!

ས.

The next morning Mrs. Sayre looked at Elizabeth anxiously. It was evident that her daughter suffered, and she longed to find one weak spot in that armor of reserve where she might pour in the oil and wine of love. But Elizabeth's face had settled into the invincible calm which sympathy dare not touch. Indeed, her mother would even have wondered whether her suspicion, in that hurried kiss at midnight, had not been all wrong, had it not been for Mr. Hamilton's manner.

Oliver Hamilton was too confused and dazed by his own possibilities to take thought of what his face or manner might betray; he said to himself that Elizabeth did not know what self-knowledge had leaped into his astounded brain in those brief words of his. But he would tell her; only, not to-day, - not to-day! He did not doubt that he loved her, at least he loved Love; but to love her, gave the lie to five years' protestations!

Elizabeth made no effort to avoid him. She believed so firmly in his loyalty to the past,—a loyalty so beautiful that it had kindled in her the very love which it denied, — she believed so entirely in him and his love for the dead Alice, that she would not permit herself to doubt that his thought of her was only a fleeting fancy.

To avoid him was to confess a fear that it was more. So when, on Sunday afternoon, he suggested that they should go out and walk across the bridge and along the road that led over the marshes, she assented with pleasure-a pleasure in which, when they started, there was a thread of irritation, because she knew, as they walked down the Court, that her mother and aunt Susan were looking after them, and speculating as to whether Oliver was "going to speak." She was glad to turn into the first side street, and lose the consciousness of the eyes that were watching the back of her head. It was that sense of relief that made her draw a long breath, and Oliver instantly turned and looked at her with a solicitude in his eyes which was new.

"Are you tired?" he said gently.

"No," she answered. She saw that the hour she had refused to think possible was coming; yet it should not come! "Oh, Oliver," she said hurriedly, "I wish you would make a study of the marshes in September; there is no autumnal coloring so lovely as those stretches of bronze and red, with pools here and

there that are like bits of the sky. Suppose we try to find just what you want, this afternoon, and then this week you can go to work. I wish you would really and seriously begin to work." "I want to, now, myself," he said soberly. "I have wasted too much time. Elizabeth, I have lived in a dream."

"Yes," she agreed, wondering whether the unsteadiness which she felt in her voice could be heard, "I know you have. I have been thinking about it lately, and I wanted to say to you-I know you will forgive me for Alice's sake, if it seems a hard thing-I wanted to say to you that it seems to me you ought to make your grief an inspiration in your life, not a hindrance. It ought to mean achievement, not a dream,

Oliver."

He did not answer her, and when, a little later, he began to speak, it was of something else.

The walk across the marshes was toward the east; the city lay behind them, and the little tidal river, catching a faint glow on its darkening expanse, wandered on ahead, fading at last into the cold violet of the distant hills.

"Oh, this is what you ought to do," Elizabeth said, as they paused a moment, and turned to look back at the town, whose windows flared with a sudden ruddy blaze. The house tops were black against the yellow sky; a cross upon a distant spire flashed, and then faded into the sunset. The sea stretched its fingers in among the marshes, and rifts of water shone blue with the faint upper sky, or fiercely red where the clouds along the west were mirrored. The salt grass had bronzed and bleached, and had a hundred rippling tints of dull purple or warmer russet. Some of it had been cut, and lay in sodden yellow swaths, and some had been gathered into haystacks, that stood here and there like little thatched domes. A group of boys were playing down by the water, and their black figures stood out clear against the amber sky; a tongue of flame from their bonfire leaped up, red and sharp, and lapsed again; and the lazy trail of white smoke, lying low along the marsh, brought to the two watchers the faint delicious scent of burning brush and drift.

"Oh, couldn't you do this?" Elizabeth said, breathless with the joy of color. "Oh, how wonderful the sky is!"

But Oliver, instead of planning for a picture, was staring into her face.

"Elizabeth," he said, "I want to tell you-something.