"Ah, you have come!" cries he, gladly, going to meet her while yet she is a long way off. "Yes." She can say no more, but her fear has departed at sight of him, and once more she grows calm, collected, and mistress of herself. She keeps well away from him, however, and holds out to him--that "white wonder"--her hand, from a very great distance, as it seems to him. Does she distrust him, then? Thinking of this, Brian takes the extended hand, and holds it in a clasp that though tender is light, and refrains with much forbearance from pressing his lips to it. "To come _here_, and at this hour! It is madness!" says Monica, hastily. "A very blessed madness, then, and with method in it: it has enabled me to see _you_." "Oh, do not talk like that. You ought not to see me at all. And, now, what is it? Kit said you wanted me sadly." "And so I do, and not only now but always." "If," reproachfully, "it is nothing pressing, would not to-morrow have done?" "To-morrow never comes. There is nothing like to-day; and how could I have lived till to-morrow? I could not sleep, I could not rest, until I had seen you. My heart seemed on fire. Monica, how could you have treated me as you did to-day?" She is silent. The very fact of her not answering convinces him her coldness at the Barracks was intentional, and his tone takes an additional sadness as he speaks again. "You meant it then?" he says. "You would not throw me even one poor glance. If you could only look into my heart, and read how cruelly I felt your unkindness, you might----" "I don't know what you mean," says Monica. "Why should you talk of unkindness? Why should I be kinder to you than to another?" "Of your grace alone; I know that," says the young man, humbly. He has paid court to many a town-bred damsel before this, and gained their smiles too, and their sighs; yet now he sues to this cold child as he never sued before, and knows his very soul is set on her good will. "Why must you choose me to love,--_me_, of all the world?" says Monica, tremulously: "it is wide, there are others--and----" "Because I must. It is my fate, and I am glad of it. Whom worthier could I love?" says the lover, with fond, passionate reverence. "Many, no doubt. And why love at all? Let us be friends, then, if it is indeed decreed that our lives meet----" "There could never be mere friendship between you and me. If your heart sleeps, at least your sense must tell you that." "Then I could wish myself without sense. I want to know nothing about it. Alas! how sad a thing is love!" "And how joyous! It is the one emotion to be fed and fostered. 'All others are but vanity.' I will persist in loving you until I die." "That is a foolish saying; and, even if you do, what will come of it all?" says Monica, with a sigh. "Marriage, I trust," returns he, right cheerily. "Because, to give you another example of love's endurance, and to quote old Southey to you, I will tell you that he says,--