"Lora, have you heard aught said by any one concerning my illness?" "Dear, Father Mantus told me, on the day you went away, that you feared the trouble which came upon your father, and upon your father's father; and oh, Alastair my beloved, he told me what that trouble was." "Then you know: you can understand?" "What?" "That which now appals me ... now kills me." "Alastair!" "Yes, Lora?" "Oh, Alastair, Alastair, you do not mean that ... that ... you too ... _you_ are ... are ... that _you_ have the ... the ... mind-dark?" "Dear heart of mine, this sorrow has come to us. I----" With a sharp cry Lora held him to her, despairingly, wildly, as though even at that moment he were to be snatched from her. Then, in a passion of sobbing, she shook in his arms as a withered aspen-leaf ere it fall to the wind. The tears ran down his face; his mouth twitched; his long, thin fingers moved restlessly in her hair and upon her quivering shoulder. No other sound than her convulsive sobs, than his spasmodic breathing, met in the quietude of whisper-music exhaled as an odour by the sea and by the low wind among the corries and upon the grasses of the isle. A white moth came fluttering slowly toward them, hovering vaguely awhile overhead, and then drifting alow and almost to their feet. In the shadow it loomed grey and formless--an obscure thing that might have come out of the heart of the unguarded brain. Upward again it fluttered, idly this way and that: then suddenly alit upon the hair of Alastair, poising itself on spread wings, and now all agleam as with pale phosphorescent fire, where the moonlight filled it with sheen as of white water falling against the sun. The gleam caught Lora's eyes as, with a weary sigh, she lifted her head. A strange smile came into her face. Slowly she disengaged her right arm, and half raised it. Alastair was about to speak, but her eyes brought silence upon him. "_Hush!_" she whispered at last. He saw that her eyes looked beyond his, beyond him, as it seemed. What did she see? The trouble in his brain moved anew at this touch of mystery. "What is it, Lora?" "Hush, hush!... I see a sign from heaven upon your forehead ... the sign of the white peace that Seumas says is upon them who are of the company of the Belovëd." "Lora, what are you saying? What is it? What do you see?" His voice suddenly was harsh, fretful. Lora shrank for a moment; then, as the white moth rose and fluttered away into the dark, faintly agleam with moonfire till it reached the shadow, she pitifully raised her hand to his brow. "Come, dear, let us go in. All will be well with us, whatever happens." "Never ... never ... never!" "O Alastair, if it be God's will?" "Ay, and if it be God's will?" "I cannot lose you; you will always be mine; no sorrow can part us; nothing can separate us; nothing but the Passing, and that ..." "Lora!" For answer she looked into his eyes.