How did I utter it? By what words did my heart make itself known? I
remember not. All was as a dream that falls upon a restless, feverish
night, and fades away as the eyes unclose on the peace of a cloudless
heaven, on the bliss of a golden sun. A new morrow seemed indeed upon the
earth when I woke from a life-long yesterday,--her dear hand in mine, her
sweet face bowed upon my breast.

And then there was that melodious silence in which there is no sound
audible from without; yet within us there is heard a lulling celestial
music, as if our whole being, grown harmonious with the universe, joined
from its happy deeps in the hymn that unites the stars.

In that silence our two hearts seemed to make each other understood, to be
drawing nearer and nearer, blending by mysterious concord into the
completeness of a solemn union, never henceforth to be rent
asunder.

At length I said softly: "And it was here on this spot that I first saw
you,--here that I for the first time knew what power to change our world
and to rule our future goes forth from the charm of a human face!"

Then Lilian asked me timidly, and without lifting her eyes, how I had so
seen her, reminding me that I promised to tell her, and had never yet done
so.

And then I told her of the strange impulse that bad led me into the
grounds, and by what chance my steps had been diverted down the path that
wound to the glade; how suddenly her form had shone upon my eyes,
gathering round itself the rose hues of the setting sun, and how wistfully