them, they parted, and John Arniston found himself in the street. It was
the full rush of the traffic of London; but to him it was all strangely
silent. Everything ran noiselessly to-night. Newsboys mouthed the latest
horror, and John Arniston never heard them. Mechanically he avoided the
passers-by, but it was with no belief in their reality. To him they
were but phantom shapes walking in a dream. His world was behind
him--and before. The fragrance of the bliss of dreams was on his lips.
His heart bounded with the thought of that "To-morrow" which they had
promised to one another. The white Italian cities which he had visited
alone gleamed whiter than ever before him. Was it possible that he
should sit in the great square of St. Mark's with Miriam Gale by his
side, the sun making a patchwork of gold and blue among the pinnacles of
the Church of the Evangelist? There, too, he saw, as he walked, the Lido
shore, and the long sickle sweep of the beach. The Adriatic slumbrously
tossed up its toy surges, and lo! a tall girl in white walked
hand-in-hand with him. He caught his breath. He had just realised that
it was all to begin to-morrow. Then again he saw that glimmering white
figure throw itself down in an agony of parting into the low chair,
kneeling beside which his life began.

But stop--what was it after all that Miriam had been saying? Something
about her husband? Had he heard aright--that he was still alive, only
dead to her?--"Dead for many years," was her word. After all, it was no
matter. Nothing mattered any more. His goddess had stepped down to him
with open arms. He had heard the beating of her heart. She was a
breathing, loving woman.

"To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow." It seemed so far away. And were
there indeed other skies, blue and clear, in Italy, in which the sun
shone? It seemed hard to believe with the fog of London, yellow and