“Oh, no!” he answered with a faint smile; “nothing at all——” “Not that you have been embracing her, for instance? That, I understand, is Eliza Layard’s story.” “No, no; I never did such a thing in my life.” A little sigh of relief broke from Mary’s lips. At the worst this was but an affair of sentiment. “I think, dear,” she said in her ordinary slow voice, “that you had better set out the trouble in your own words, with as few details as possible, or none at all. Such things are painful, are they not—especially where the dead are concerned?” Morris bowed his head and began: “You know I found her on the ship, singing as she only could sing, and she was a very strange and beautiful woman—perhaps beautiful is not the word—” “It will do,” interrupted Mary; “at any rate, you thought her beautiful.” “Then afterwards we grew intimate, very intimate, without knowing it, almost—indeed, I am not sure that we should ever have known it had it not been for the mischief-making of Eliza Layard——” “May she be rewarded,” ejaculated Mary. “Well, and after she—that is, Eliza Layard—had spoken to my father, he attacked Mr. Fregelius, his daughter, and myself, and it seems that she confessed to my father that she was—was——” “In love with you—not altogether unnatural, perhaps, from my point of view; though, of course, she oughtn’t to have been so.” “Yes, and said that she was going away and—on Christmas Eve we met there in the Dead Church. Then somehow—for I had no intention of such a thing—all the truth came out, and I found that I was no longer master of myself, and—God forgive me! and you, Mary, forgive me, too—that I loved her also.” “And afterwards?” said Mary, moving her skirts a little. “And afterwards—oh! it will sound strange to you—we made some kind of compact for the next world, a sort of spiritual marriage; I can call it nothing else. Then I shook hands with her and went away, and in a few hours she was dead—dead. But the compact stands, Mary; yes, that compact stands for ever.” “A compact of a spiritual marriage in a place where there is no marriage. Do you mean, Morris, that you wish this strange proceeding to destroy your physical and earthly engagement to myself?” “No, no; nor did she wish it; she said so. But you must judge. I feel that I have done you a dreadful wrong, and I was determined that you should know the worst.” “That was very good of you,” Mary said, reflectively, “for really there is no reason why you should have told me this peculiar story. Morris, you have been working pretty hard lately, have you not?” “Yes,” he replied, absently, “I suppose I have.” “Was this young lady what is called a mystic?” “Perhaps. Danish people often are. At any rate, she saw things more clearly than most. I mean that the future was nearer to her mind; and in a sense, the past also.” “Indeed. You must have found her a congenial companion. I suppose that you talked a good deal of these things?” “Sometimes we did.”