She fell into my arms in a heap. I clasped her and kissed her, and called her by all her pet names, but I think I knew all the time that she was dead. Her hands were tightly clenched. In one of them she held something fast. When I was quite sure that she was dead, and that nothing mattered at all any more, I let him open her hand to see what she held. It was a grey marble finger. _THE MASS FOR THE DEAD_. I was awake--widely, cruelly awake. I had been awake all night; what sleep could there be for me when the woman I loved was to be married next morning--married, and not to me? I went to my room early; the family party in the drawing-room maddened me. Grouped about the round table with the stamped plush cover, each was busy with work, or book, or newspaper, but not too busy to stab my heart through and through with their talk of the wedding. Her people were near neighbours of mine, so why should her marriage not be canvassed in my home circle? They did not mean to be cruel; they did not know that I loved her; but she knew it. I told her, but she knew it before that. She knew it from the moment when I came back from three years of musical study in Germany--came back and met her in the wood where we used to go nutting when we were children. I looked into her eyes, and my whole soul trembled with thankfulness that I was living in a world that held her also. I turned and walked by her side, through the tangled green wood, and we talked of the long-ago days, and it was, "Have you forgotten?" and "Do you remember?" till we reached her garden gate. Then I said-- "Good-bye; no, _auf wiedersehn_, and in a very little time, I hope." And she answered-- "Good-bye. By the way, you haven't congratulated me yet." "Congratulated you?" "Yes, did I not tell you I am to marry Mr. Benoliel next month?" And she turned away, and went up the garden slowly. I asked my people, and they said it was true. Kate, my dear playfellow, was to marry this Spaniard, rich, wilful, accustomed to win, polished in manners and base in life. Why was she to marry him? "No one knows," said my father, "but her father is talked about in the city, and Benoliel, the Spaniard, is rich. Perhaps that's it." That was it. She told me so when, after two weeks spent with her and near her, I implored her to break so vile a chain and to come to me, who loved her--whom she loved. "You are quite right," she said calmly. We were sitting in the window-seat of the oak parlour in her father's desolate old house. "I do love you, and I shall marry Mr. Benoliel." "Why?" "Look around you and ask me why, if you can." I looked around--on the shabby, bare room, with its faded hangings of sage-green moreen, its threadbare carpet, its patched, washed-out chintz chair-covers. I looked out through the square, latticed window at the ragged, unkempt lawn, at her own gown--of poor material, though she wore it as queens might desire to wear ermine--and I understood.