It came so suddenly that neither of them at first knew what had happened. A few meetings among the lonely by-ways of the moor that they had honestly persuaded themselves were by mere chance. A little walking side by side where the young leaves brushed their faces and the young ferns hid their feet. A little laughing, when the April showers would catch them lost in talk, and hand in hand they would race for the shelter of some over-hanging bank and crouch close pressed against each other among the twisted roots of the stunted firs. A little lingering on the homeward way, watching the horned moon climb up above the woods, while the song of some late lark filled all the world around them. Until one evening, having said good-bye though standing with their hands still clasped, she had raised her face to his and he had drawn her to him and their lips had met. Neither had foreseen it nor intended it. It had been so spontaneous, so natural, that it seemed but the signing of a pact, the inevitable fulfilling of the law. Nothing had changed except that, now, they knew. He turned his footsteps away from the town. A deep endless peace seemed to be around him. So this was what Edward had meant when he had written, so short a while before the end, that love was the great secret leading to God, that without it life was meaningless and void. It was for this that he had waited, like some blind chrysalis not knowing of the day when it should be born into the sunlight. He laughed, remembering what his dream had been: wealth, power, fame: the senseless dream of the miser starving beside his hoarded gold. These things he would strive for now with greater strength than ever--would win them, not for themselves, but for Love’s sake, as service, as sacrifice. He had no fear. Others had failed. It was not love, but passion that burns itself out. There was no alloy in his desire for her. She was beautiful he knew. But he was drawn by it as one is moved by the beauty of a summer’s night, the tenderness of spring, the mystery of flowers. There was no part of her that whispered to him. The thought of her hands, her feet, the little dimple in her chin; it brought no stirring of his blood. It was she herself, with all about her that was imperceptible, unexplainable, that he yearned for; not to possess, but to worship, to abide with. For a period he went about his work as in a dream, his brain guiding him as a man’s brain guides him crossing the road while his mind is far away. The thought of her was all around him. It was for that brief evening hour when they would meet and look into one another’s eyes that he lived.