In such moments he trod the lover's hell, which is as real as the lover's heaven. He could never attain to her. He saw the miraculous freshness and richness of her nature, and knew the crudeness of his own. What was there in him that she should desire him? This very bond of sympathy between her and her father, so rare and sensitive, became his menace. She could not _want_ him; but, O God! with what an agony of yearning did he want her! And then, as he sat disconsolate, with head resting on his hand, she would turn to him, as if she divined his thoughts, with a gaze infinitely pitiful and kind; and his eyes clung to hers for an instant in mute appeal and adoration, and something told him that there was yet a void in that virgin heart that he alone could fill. O exquisite terrors, authentic agonies, brief sky-daring hopes, surely it were worth all the millions of years of slow evolution from the brute to touch but for an instant so painful and delicate a bliss! One night--it was a Sunday night--the three sat together in the little room. Vickars was unusually silent. "You look depressed, father. What is it?" said Elizabeth. "Oh, nothing personal, my child. I think it's merely the spectacle of the congregation at church to-night that has disturbed me." "What was wrong with the congregation?" "Nothing was right, I think. Didn't you notice how stolid they looked--and in the presence of truths and hopes so vast, that had they believed them, they must have leapt to their feet and shouted in ecstasy?" "That would be a novelty indeed," she smiled. "It would have been natural," he replied. "But alas! who is natural? Most people never live at first-hand. They are plagiarists. Arthur, don't be a plagiarist. It cuts the fibre of sincerity. It's like drinking stale water from a dirty cup. But there," and then came the usual comment, "let us have some music." And Elizabeth began to play. Perhaps it was the suggestion of the Sabbath evening that made her play sweet and solemn airs from Handel. Presently she wandered into old hymn-tunes, and finally began to play "Nearer, my God, to Thee." Suddenly she stopped, for Vickars had left the room. "Oh, I forgot!" she cried. "I ought not to have played that." While she spoke, her father returned. His face was pale: he held in his hand a miniature of a woman. "Do you remember what to-day is?" he said in a soft, shaken voice. "Twenty years ago to-day. And that was the last thing she played ... and then she went ... in the night ... upon her long journey. And it all seems but an hour ago. O my child! you are so like your mother." He kissed her forehead. Twenty years ago, and love still fresh! Arthur bowed his head before the sacred vision. He rose to go. He felt he had no right to look on that unveiled immortal sorrow. Elizabeth stood for a moment with him at the garden gate. "Could you?" ... He stopped, for emotion choked him. "Could you ... love me like that?"