“Yes; mother and child. I was little else than a boy--an undergraduate. She was little else than a girl--yet she had been married--then deserted by her husband and utterly alone and friendless when I met her--in London. She was a dresser at a theatre--educated though, and refined far above her class. At first I helped her--then loved her--we couldn't marry--she offered--at first I refused. But then--well, you can end it. We loved each other dearly. If she had lived, I should have been true to her till this day--I should have married her, for she would soon have become a widow. When the child was born, I was one-and-twenty--she nineteen. We were wildly, ecstatically happy. Three months afterwards the child caught diphtheria--she caught it too from the baby--first the little one died--then the mother died in my arms. I seemed to have lived all my life before I had entered upon it. It was a heavy burthen for a lad.” “And since?” asked Katherine gently. “I have shrunk morbidly from risking such torture a second time.” “Yours is a nature to love altogether if it loves at all.” “I reverence love too highly to treat it lightly,” he said. “Tell me,” he added, “do you think my punishment came upon me rightly? There are those that would. Are you one?” “God forbid,” she replied in a low voice. “God forbid that I of all creatures should dare to judge others.” The earnestness in her tone startled him. He caught a side-view of her face. It wore the same look of sadness as on the night they had seen “Denise” together in the winter. She had suffered. A great yearning pity for her rose in his heart. “It is well that the past can be the past,” he said. “We live, and gather to ourselves fresh personalities. A little gradual change, a little daily hardening or softening, weakening or strengthening--and at the end of a few years we are different entities. Things become memories--reflections without life. That was why I said it was strange. Now all that time is only a vague memory, and it mingles with the far-off memory of my mother, who died when I was a tiny boy. And now I have put it to rest for ever--for it was a ghost until I knew you. Do you believe in idle fancies?” “I live in a great many,” said Katherine. “I fancied--that by telling you, I should be free to give myself up to a new, strange, wonderful world that I saw ready to open for me.” “Could I ever say 'I thank you' for telling me?” replied Katherine. “I take all that you have said to my heart.” There was a long silence. He put his hand down by her side and it rested upon hers. She made a movement to withdraw it, but his touch tightened into a clasp. She allowed it to remain, surrendering herself to the happiness. Each felt the subtle communion of spirit too precious to be broken by speech. The lantern-hung boats passed backwards and forwards. One party, just as they came abreast, struck up an attempt at a jodeling song: “_Juch hol-dio hol-di-ai-do hol-di-a hol-dio_.”