which I had drawn my arm; but when she
spoke if was in the quietest voice:

"We will go there together; but not yet."

"When?''

''When you are stronger; when I am
your wife."

"And you will let that bo soon?"

"Yes, it must be soon."

It seemed to me her heart was beating
very heavily. I told her so.

"It is full," she said, drawing a deep
breath. " It is over-full."

"Of what?"

"Cannot you guess?" She leaned her
face close down to mine, too close for me
to be able to read it. " It is strange if
you cannot guess," she added.

"If only I dared to read it by my own,"
I said.

"Dare to read it by your own," she
answered.

"My heart is heavy and over-full with
love of you, Huldah."

"And must not mine be heavy and full
with love of you? Of you so generous that
you are willing to make of an unknown
woman your wife: to give her your name,
not asking her right to the name she bears,
or to any name."

She spoke more quickly than I had ever
heard her speak: still with her face so close
to mine that I could not read it.

"Generous? I generous in being ready
to give for that without which everything
else is worthless, all that is only any worth
through that."

"That is it!" she said, with something
approaching to eagerness (so answering, I
thought afterwards, some inward scruple).
"It is to yourself you are ready to sacrifice
yourself: not to me. Suppose I tell you I
have no right to the name you call me by,
or to any name; that though a mother,
I have never been a wife; that I shame
your name if I take it; that——-"

"You can shame nothing; you and
shame are not to be named together. I
want to know nothing of your past. What
you are, is enough for me, and what you
will be——- my wife!"

She answered me never a word. She
suffered my caresses as she suffered my
other forms of speech. Not one slightest
hand-pressure, even of a finger.

My wooing of her, was like the wooing of
a statue, if only a statue could have been
exquisitely warm and soft and, by contact,
could have thrilled one with intensest life.

A day was fixed for our marriage. The
time went on. I cannot say that it
lingered, or that it flew; it was, to me, a
time of intoxication—not quite untroubled
by occasional pangs, and pauses of sobriety,
for sometimes in those deep dark eyes of
hers I surprised expressions that troubled
me—sometimes looks of pity—sometimes
darker looks than I could understand.

At last there came an evening when, as
we parted for the night, I said: " After this
night, only one night more, and then a day
after which nothing 'but Death shall part
us!"

An hour afterwards, not being able to
sleep, I came back into the sitting-room for
a book. She was sitting before the embers,
which threw a lurid light upon her face,
and upon her hands clasped round her
knees.

She was so far absorbed that she did not
hear the approach of my slippered feet across
the floor.

I spoke to her, throwing myself at her
feet. I poured out a passion of foolish
eloquence. To my wonder, to my horror,
to my fear, to my delight, she burst into
a terrible storm of weeping.

I tried to soothe her as a lover might;
but she rose, withdrew herself, and leaned
against the oaken chimney-piece until the
storm subsided.

I pressed to know the cause of this, grasping
her hands to detain her.

"I find I am not a fiend, not an avenging
spirit, only a woman—a weak,
miserable, wretched woman." She would tell
me no more; she rid herself of my grasp,
as if my hands had had no more strength
in them than an infant's. " To-morrow,"
she said, " by my child's grave, I will tell
you more." So, she left me; to be all that
night sleepless, and haunted by her
perplexing words.

Soon after breakfast we set out, through
the soft grey autumn morning, for the child's
grave.

I had not known, until now, where the
little creature was buried.

It was not a short walk; chiefly across
the moors till the close of it, when we
dropped down suddenly, into a little jewel
of a green dell, where was the smallest of
churches, overshadowed by the biggest of
yew-trees.

Through all the walk she had hardly
spoken. The few times I spoke to her, she
did not seem to hear me. Perhaps she
had never, since the loss of her child,
looked so softly beautiful. I had never felt
myself held further aloof from her, had
never been more afraid of her. I followed
her through the churchyard gate to the
little grave.