Still she did not speak, but it was to some extent a reassurance to him that she showed no agitation. "Are you willing that we should be married in a few days?" he asked. She lifted her head slowly, and looked at him steadfastly. "You are right," she said. "It is useless to keep on this way any longer." "You consent, then?" said he, quite encouraged by her quiet air and apparent willingness. "Don't press me for an answer to-night," she replied, after a pause, during which she regarded him with a singular fixity of expression. "Wait till to-morrow. You shall have an answer to-morrow. You are quite right. I've been thinking so myself. It is no use to put it off any longer." He spoke to her once or twice after this, but she was gazing out through the window into the darkening sky, and did not seem to hear him. He rose to go, and had already reached the hail, when she called him-- "Come back a moment Henry." He came back. "I want you to kiss me," she said. She was standing in the middle of the room. Her tall figure in its black dress was flooded with the weird radiance of the rising moon, nor was the moonshine whiter than her cheek, nor sadder than her steadfast eyes. Her lips were soft and yielding, clinging, dewy wet. He had never thought a kiss could be so sweet, and yet he could have wept, he knew not why. When he reached his lodgings he was in an extremely nervous condition. In spite of all that was painful and depressing in the associations of the event, the idea of having Madeline for his wife in a few days more had power to fill him with feverish excitement, an excitement all the more agitating because it was so composite in its elements, and had so little in common with the exhilaration and light-heartedness of successful lovers in general. He took one of the doctor's sleeping powders, tried to read a dry book on electricity, endeavoured to write a business letter, smoked a cigar, and finally went to bed. It seemed to him that he went all the next day in a dazed, dreaming state, until the moment when he presented himself, after tea, at Madeline's lodgings, and she opened the door to him. The surprise which he then experienced was calculated to arouse him had he been indeed dreaming. His first thought was that she had gone crazy, or else had been drinking wine to raise her spirits; for there was a flush of excitement on either cheek, and her eyes were bright and unsteady. In one hand she held, with a clasp that crumpled the leaves, a small scientific magazine, which he recognized as having been one of a bundle of periodicals that he had sent her. With her other hand, instead of taking the hand which he extended, she clutched his arm and almost pulled him inside the door. "Henry, do you remember what George Bayley said that night in meeting, about the river of Lethe, in which, souls were bathed and forgot the past?" "I remember something about it," he answered.