‘I will never fail you’, he said determinately; and as the ‘never’ left his lips, he recalled her little speech upon the employment of that far-reaching term; only safely to be spoken, she had said, as now he spoke it, upon the threshold of the grave. And then it flashed across him how that interview had been a curious prototype of this. Then they had touched on death and laughter, and looked forth, too, upon the passage of a year. This was the ending to that unreal dream. But he was not to view its empty structure; she should not spend last hours picking up the petals of his fallen love.

‘I will not fail you’, he repeated passionately.

She listened with some wonder to the reiterated phrase.

‘My dear, I do not doubt you.’

‘I have not said what I came to say, Ella. Will you be my wife?’

He asked the question foreseeing its consequences, but impelled to it by something deeper and more grave than pity. For a moment, she did not reply. She had been standing by him, but now sat down and began to finger the embroidered cushion, while she framed her answer. It came at last, but slowly from so quick a speaker.

‘Love,’ she said, ‘though we don’t often think of it, has an extensive wardrobe. Everyone cannot wear his richest garment,—we cannot, you and I. Let us be glad he offers us any, for without his charity we must indeed go bare. We can be comrades, you and I, and only that, I think. It is the sanest, the best compact possible, since lovers end as we may not. You will keep watch with me, as if we were both good friends, good soldiers, till the enemy strikes, and he will strike, you know.’

‘That is a cold night’s watch’, he forced himself to say, remembering her cry of greeting, and wondering how she kept such guard upon her heart.

‘Warm enough’, she said; ‘much warmer than the dawn which is to end it. You will wait and keep this watch with me?’

‘I will do anything you bid me.’

‘Then I bid you cultivate a smile for all weathers, and not to shiver yet.’ She took his hand again and led him to the window, where the lamps were being lit beside the railings of the park. ‘It is spring outside; I noticed the trees in bud this morning. The Fates have not been too unkind. They have lent us all the seasons; summer, my favourite, is coming, and—you have come.’

He stooped and caught and kissed the little fingers loosely clasping his.

‘Your last kiss has found a friend’, she whispered; ‘it has lain for a long while lonely there.’

‘Give me your rings’, he suggested; ‘I will get them altered. I like to see you wearing them.’

‘Yes’, she agreed, ‘it is stupid to give them up. I will send—no, I will fetch them myself, if you will excuse me.’

Loosing his hand, she crossed the darkening room and left him there alone, confronting the first great problem of his life.

IV

Mildred Playfair rose and left her seat by the window to stand beside the fire. She was renewing, without much display of friendliness, her acquaintance with an English spring. Henley was standing by the mantelpiece, and her movement brought them face to face. She lifted her dark eyes to his, and remarked, with the