“Is anything waste of time when we are together, dear?” She nestled up to him, drew the kiss that was inevitable. “It’s all part of the romance. Now, be good and do as I tell you. Switch off the lights--the firelight is enough.” He obeyed, with a gesture of tolerant complaisance that could refuse no whim. The room relapsed into shadows shifting in the blaze of the fire that he had stirred. “Now come and sit close by me here,” she dictated, delightfully imperious to this tall strong man, seating herself in one of the big chairs by the fireside. “There is room for two. That’s right.” He squeezed his long body into the seat beside her. She held up the crystal ball. “Now you hold it with one hand and I will hold it with one hand--like this!” With her free hand she clasped the hand that remained on her knee. “That’s all I want to see, dear--our joint fates, linked together.” Her voice was soft and tender, thrillingly sincere. “Just you and I--for ever--past or future, darling, what does it matter?--it’s all one long life that is only real when you and I touch.” She finished with a sigh of happiness. He responded in a gentle pressure of her hand. Together they stared into the crystal sphere they jointly held. Minute after minute passed in silence, in a pervading sense of intimate communion where their pulse-beats, in the contact of their hands, regulated themselves to an identical rhythm. “I see nothing,” he murmured, vaguely disappointed, “nothing at all.” “Patience!” she breathed, intent on the crystal, but sparing him a little squeeze of the fingers in recognition of his presence. “Look!--keep on looking!” Again there was silence. The ticking of the clock upon the mantelpiece became almost hypnotic in its monotony. The fire dulled down, its light no longer reflected in leaping flashes in the crystal. “Look!” she whispered. “It’s clouding over--going milky! Do you see?” He nodded assent, unwilling to break the spell by speech, mysteriously awed as he, too, saw a milky cloud suffuse the depths of the crystal. Holding their breath, they waited, closely linked, for they knew not what of vision. As they stared into it, almost unconscious now of their own bodies, of the muscular effort that held the crystal globe in unvarying focus from their eyes, they saw the cloud break and clear in a widening rift that seemed to open into infinity. “Look!” she murmured. “_It’s coming!_--Look--_People!_--crowds of them--running and jostling each other! Look, it’s a fête of some sort--a lot of them have cockades! Do you see?”