“I wrote to you,” he continued, “finding that there was no chance of speaking. I wrote and told you how most dearly I loved you, and prayed you to be my wife. What was your answer to that prayer?” He looked into her face as he asked the question; it was so sweet, sad and sorrowful, but there was no untruth to mar its beauty. The wind stirred the bluebells faintly, and a deep, soft sigh shivered through them. “What was your answer to my prayer?” he repeated. “None,” she replied. “I never received such a letter; therefore, I could not answer it.” “Say that again,” he gasped, in a thick, hoarse voice. “I never received it, Ronald. This is the first word I have ever heard of it.” He reeled as though one had struck him a sudden, mortal blow. The sweet, soft voice continued sadly: “You have not thought more hardly of me than I of you. I believed that night you loved me, and I was--well, it does not matter how happy; then you came and went without saying one word. Suddenly you absented yourself altogether; you never came near me. I met you, and you avoided me. I knew no more until I heard and knew that you were going to Mount Severn.” His face was not pleasant to look upon as she uttered these words. “Then you never read it, Hermione, or knew of my writing at all?” “Not one word,” she said, earnestly. There were a few moments of silence, unbroken save by the wind among the harebells. “Answer me only one more question, and I have done,” he said. “If you had received my letter, what would your answer have been?” The light he remembered so well came into her face; for a few moments she forgot the barrier between them that could never be passed. “You know what it would have been, Ronald. I--I should have said ‘Yes,’ because I have loved you, and you alone, all my life.” Then the words died on her lips, for, strong and brave as he was, he had flung himself face downward among the harebells, and lay there, sobbing like a child. A strong man’s tears are terrible to see. Women weep, and, though one pities them, it seems but natural. When a proud, self-controlled, high-spirited man breaks down and weeps, the grief is terrible to witness. So she thought who bent over him now with soothing words. “Ronald, you will break my heart if you do this. There has been a terrible mistake, but it will be made right for us in another world. We have one comfort--we did love each other. God knows what has parted us; it is not untruth or falsity. Oh, Ronald! does it not comfort you to know this?” All that answered her was the deep-drawn, bitter sobs that shook his strong frame, and the sweet, rustling sound of the bells in the breeze. “If I had been false to you, as you believed, Ronald, the memory of me would have been a lifelong pain. If you had been false to me, the very thought of you would have been a perpetual sorrow; but now we may remember without sin that we once loved each other in all truth.”