question. She had a feeling (it was scarcely a conviction) that if he
believed more strenuously in the validity of his apparition as an
authorized messenger from the unseen world it would yet come again and
declare its errand. She could not accept the theory that if such a thing
actually happened it could happen for nothing at all, or that the reason
of its occurrence could be indefinitely postponed. She was impatient of
that, as often as he urged the possibility, and she wished him to use a
seriousness of mind in speaking of his apparition which should form some
sort of atonement to it for his past levity, though since she had taken
his apparition into her keeping he had scarcely hazarded any suggestion
concerning it; in fact it had become so much her apparition that he had a
fantastic reluctance from meddling with it.

"You are always requiring a great occasion for it," he said, at last.
"What greater event could it have foreshadowed or foreshown, than that
which actually came to pass?"

"I don't understand you, Arthur," she said, letting her hand creep into
his, where it trembled provisionally as they sat together in the
twilight.

"Why, that was the day I first saw you."

"Now, you are laughing!" she said, pulling her hand away.

"Indeed, I'm not! I couldn't imagine anything more important than the
union of our lives. And if that was what the apparition meant to portend
it could not have intimated it by a more noble and impressive behavior.
Simply to be there, and then to be gone, and leave the rest to us! It was
majestic, it was--delicate!"