"You will write to me, Marion--and, darling, my heart lives on your
words--they are ever present with me. When I read one of your letters it
seems to me your voice is whispering, and that whisper makes the only
music that cheers my day. Tell me in your letters once, and once again,
that you will be my wife, that you will love me, and never care for any
one else."

"I have told you so," she said; "but if the words please you, I will
tell you over and over again, as you say. You know I love you, Allan."

"I know you are an angel!" cried the young man. "In all the wide world
there is none like you."

Then he clasped the little white hands more tightly in his own, and
whispered sweet words to her that brought a bright flush to her face and
a love light to her eyes. She drooped her head with the coy, pretty
shyness of a bird, listening to words that seemed to her all poetry and
music.

It was a pretty love scene. The lovers stood at the end of an
old-fashioned orchard; the fruit hung ripe on the trees--golden-brown
pears and purple plums, the grass under foot was thick and soft, the sun
had set, the dew was falling, and the birds had gone to rest.

The girl, standing under the trees, with downcast, blushing face and
bright, clear eyes, was lovely as a poet's dream. She was not more than
seventeen, and looked both young and childlike for that age. She had a
face fair as a summer's morning, radiant with youth and happiness.
Greuze might have painted her and immortalized her. She had a delicate