seemed to break now in a vista of gladness, of glory, as the day-dawn
breaks with its golden rays of God-given promise--the new life, perfect
and pure and innocent--because he loved her. "Helena! Speak to me. Tell
me that it is not too late--tell me that you love me too."

And then her eyes were raised to his, and they were wet--but there was
love-light and a wondrous happiness shining through the tears.

"Helena!" he murmured brokenly--and swept her into his arms--and kissed
the eyelids, lowered now, the hair, the white brow, the lips--kissed
her, and held her there, her clinging arms about his neck, her face half
hidden on his shoulder.

And so for a space they stood there--and there were no words to say,
only the song in their hearts in deathless melody--but after a little
time he held her from him, and lifted up her face that he might look his
fill upon it.

"Helena," he said, "I cannot understand it all yet--it is as though it
were born out of the sin and the darkness and the blackness of what is
gone--as though here at this Shrine that we created in mockery and crime
it was meant that you and I should save each other for each other. And
yet this Shrine as we have made it is a thing of guilt, and it has
brought us all, you and I, and Harry, and the Flopper to a new life."

She lay still for a moment in his arms--then her hand crept up and
touched his forehead and smoothed back his hair.

"I do not quite know how to say it," she said a little timidly. "When
you went away this afternoon, the Patriarch took me back into his room,