Those whose fate binds them to cities can have no idea of the delicate joys of the country walk, with the beloved one—him or her—who fills the thoughts. Alas! for the poor wench that has no better pleasure than to tramp along the crowded street. What does she know of the loveliness of "solitude for two," of the dear sympathy of nature, perfect in every season with the heart that is of her clay? Not, indeed, that Miss Cuningham acknowledged even to herself that Raymond Bethune was the present lord of her mind, much less her beloved. Nevertheless, the glamour of that hour that strikes but once in a lifetime was upon her. Love, first love, the only love, comparable but to the most exquisite mystery of the dawn, of the spring; happiness so evanescent that a touch will destroy it, so delicate that the scent of it is obliterated by fulfilment; so utterly made of anticipation, of unrealised, unformed desire, that to shape it, to seize it, is to lose it—is it not strange that we, to whom such a gift is granted, receive it, nearly all of us, not as we should, on our knees, but grossly, greedily, impatiently, ungratefully, hurrying through the golden moments, tearing apart the gossamer veil, grasping the flower from the stem before its unfolding? No wonder that to most the day that follows on this dawn should be so full of heat and burden; the fruit of this blossom so sour to the parent that the children’s teeth are set on edge; that, behind the veil, the vision should prove dull, flat, and unprofitable! Now Aspasia, though a very creature of earth and one that knew no transcendental longings, had kept the pure heart of her childhood; and therefore this hour of her first love, all vague, all unacknowledged, was wholly sweet. They knelt, Bethune and she, side by side, in the small bare church. She flung him a look of comical anguish over the grunting of the harmonium and the unmelodious chants of the village choir. She struck into a hymn herself, in a high clear pipe, as true as a robin’s song. A pale young clergyman, with protruding eyeballs, led the service with a sort of anæmic piety; grand old Bible words were gabbled or droned; grand old Church prayers, with the dignity of an antique faith still resounding in them—who, that heard, seemed to care? It was the Sunday routine, and that was all.