It did not last long. Suddenly, above the city roofs, a cross of silvery light shone out against the sky. The illumination of Saint Peter's had begun. Above the winding narrow streets, above palace roofs, above palm and cypress, above triumphal arch and mouldering temple, over the palace of the Cæsars, over Capitol and Forum, the silvery cross shone glad, triumphant; and from it, the light spread from window to window, from pillar to pillar, till the vast pile was one glory, changing rapidly from soft silvery radiance into a glow of golden fire. 'It was worth coming to see. Was it not, Mary?' 'Mary!' A stranger's voice echoed her name; and instead of answering my question, she sprang with a low cry from my side, and laid her head upon a stranger's breast. 'Did you not get my letters? I have been looking everywhere for you,' I heard him say. She did not answer, nor raised her head; as if at last she had found her rest. 'You are not alone here?' he went on. 'Who are you with?' Then with a quiver as of pain, she raised herself, and looked from me to him with beseeching eyes and trembling clasped hands. Before she spoke--for even in all the agony of my crushed-out hopes, my love for her bore down all other feelings, and I tried to save her from the pain of telling me what I already knew--I said: 'You have found an older friend than I am, Mary. Shall I leave him to take you to Mrs Vereker?' 'An older friend?' he repeated. 'By Jove! I should think so.' Then raising his hat, he shook hands with me as I turned away. I turned into the darkness, but not before I had seen that until now I had never known her, my love, my promised wife. I had known a beautiful statue, not the beautiful woman who, with eyes upraised to his, stood in the subdued light looking up to Gordon Frazer. All the coldness, all the stately calm had gone, fallen from her as a mantle falls--a mantle which had hidden the fullness of her loveliness, and had concealed from me a tender grace and beauty I had never till now beheld. I have never seen her since. * * * * *