see you face to face, to speak to you--to you who gave me no answer when
I wrote, and wrote again!... I am weary with the joys of this day. May I
rest upon yonder seat?"

He moved backward before her, slowly, across the grass-plot to the bench
of stone, and she followed him. Their gaze met the while. There was no
wonder in his look, no consciousness of self in hers. In the spaces
beyond life their souls might meet thus; each drawing by the veil, each
recognizing the other for what it was. They took their seat upon the
wide stone bench, with the primroses at their feet, and above them the
empurpling arch of the sky. Throughout the past months, when he dreamed
of her, when he thought of her, he bowed himself before her, he raised
not his eyes to hers. But now their looks met, and his countenance of a
haggard and ravaged beauty did not change before her still regard. The
floating silver gauze of her open sleeve lying upon the stone between
them he lightly, with no pressure that she might notice, let rest his
hand upon it. In the act of doing this he wondered at himself, but then
he thought, "I am on my way to death...."

She was the first to speak.

"Seven months have gone since that day at Whitehall."

"Ay," he answered, "seven months."

She went on: "I have learned not to reckon life that way. Since that day
at Whitehall life has lasted a very long time."

Again he echoed--"A very long time." Then, after a pause: "I have made
for you a long, long life. If to have done so is to your irreparable