"Tell me," he says,--some mad, inward craving driving him to ask the needless question--"how would it have been with you if I had been killed yesterday? Would you _in time_ have loved again?" I am not sure, but I think he would have recalled the words when it is too late. A quiver runs through the girl's frame; a great wave of emotion sweeping over her face transfigures it, changing its calm to quick and living grief. The moonbeams, catching her, fold her in floods of palest glory, until he who watches her with remorseful eyes can only liken her to a fragile saint, as she stands there in her white, clinging draperies. "You are cruel," she says, at last, with a low, gasping cry. He falls at her feet. "Forgive me, my love, my darling!" he entreats, "I should never have said that, and yet I am glad I did. To feel, to _know_ you are altogether mine----" "You had a doubt?" she says; and then two large tears rise slowly, until her beautiful eyes look passionate reproach at him through a heavy mist. Then the mist clears, and two shining drops, quitting their sweet home, fall upon the back of the small hand she has placed nervously against her throat. "A last one, and it is gone _forever_." He rises to his feet. "Place your arms round my neck again," he says, with anxious entreaty, "and let me feel myself forgiven." A smile, as coy as it is tender, curves her dainty lips, as she lifts to his two, soft, dewy eyes, in which the light of a first love has at last been fully kindled. She comes a step nearer to him, still smiling,--a lovely thing round which the moonbeams riot as though in ecstasy over her perfect fairness,--and then in another instant they are both in heaven, "in paradise in one another's arms!" "You are happy?" questions he, after a long pause, into which no man may look. "I am with _you_," returns she, softly. "How sweet a meaning lies within your words!" "A true meaning. But see, how late it grows! For a few hours we must part. Until to-morrow--good-night!" "Good-night, my life! my sweet, _sweet_ heart!" says Desmond. THE END.