“But once, indeed, was my heart elated, And pleased with a dream of its own-- A beautiful dream it was, but fated Soon to be overthrown. “Death, like a shadow, fell and darkened The light that had shone so clear-- How oft since then have I vainly hearkened, And prayed for his coming near. “But he cometh not, and I vainly wonder, How will the long years pass, Till I shall find rest in silence, under The trees and waving grass.” He paused and Aline, impressed against her will, but determined not to show it, cried out, almost peevishly: “Why did you read such a doleful thing? I do not like sad poetry.” “That is the fault of your youth again,” he quietly answered. “Now I, on the contrary, rather admire the pathetic style. The time may come, perhaps, when that very poem will please your fancy. Nay, you may even subscribe to the sad sentiment it embodies.” “I should never do that if I lived to be as old as Methuselah!” cried Aline, with the rash confidence of youth, and Oran Delaney smiled--that slow, pensive smile whose latent sarcasm she already began to understand with the swift intuition of woman. “Why do you despise youth, Mr. Delaney?” she cried out, hotly. “I do not despise it, I only pity it,” he answered. “I can fancy age deserving pity, but not youth,” she answered, resentfully. “Why do you pity it?” “For its illusions,” he answered, and this time the sarcasm had faded from his voice and face. Both were genuinely sad. “Its illusions--what are they?” queried the girl, and again he smiled, sadly. “Do not ask me. They will come home to you soon enough, as they have done to me. Youth is the happiest period of life. I pity it because it comes to an end. I do not despise it, and I fully subscribe to the poet’s plaint: “‘The loss of youth is sadness To all who think or feel-- A wound no after-gladness Can ever wholly heal.’” Aline lay very still for a moment, gazing silently at him with a feeling of vexation that she had permitted herself to listen to him with interest and even with an unconscious latent sympathy. She was about to make some careless answer to show her utter indifference, and to provoke him again, when she suddenly observed that he had turned deathly pale, and that a stream of blood was pouring from inside his coat sleeve down upon his hand. “You are wounded, too!” she cried out in dismay, and feeling a deathly faintness stealing over her at sight of the trickling blood. “It is nothing--a mere flesh wound--a scratch,” he muttered, tearing off his coat, hastily, and then Aline saw that his shirt-sleeve had been torn open and his arm bandaged above the elbow, but the linen had become loosened in some way, and the gaping wound was bleeding profusely.