He looked out thoughtfully, and she sat looking at him. At length he said, with a faint smile, “I wrote you last year of a visit I paid to the island and cave of Capri. That scene is like my past life. That cave was an enchanted place, so fair, so blue, so unreal! All ordinary critical sense deserted me as I gazed. I could easily have believed that the walls and ceiling were of jewels, and the watery floor some magical blue wine. As I sat in the boat and looked back, I saw a white star in the distance. Everything but that, and a long white ray from it, was blue. I rowed toward that star, I looked at it as my goal, just as I made you my goal. But when I came near, I found that it was no star. It was only the low entrance to the cave. Or, rather, it was for me the passage to sunshine and the heavens. And that you have been to me, Edith,” he said, turning toward her. “Thank God that your influence with me has always been for good, and that, in leaving you, I progress rather than change! You inspired me, and kept me from what was low, when I had no religion to help me. I can see it all now. The very excess and enthusiasm of my affection for you was necessary in order to govern me and keep me from harm. Besides, it is my nature to do with my might what my hands find to do. I was not then capable of resolving to do right for the sake of right; but when I was strong enough, then you drew aside, and left me face to face with God!” His breath came quickly, and his wide-opened eyes were fixed on the western sky, and caught its golden light. “Of course there was a struggle,” he resumed, “for I was sincere. But that is over. My unreasonable affection for you is as thoroughly eradicated as if it had never been a part of my life. I am ashamed of having so given myself up to it.” Edith hesitated, then put the test. “Dick, I must be satisfied that I am really free. If you were sure now that no other, deeper sympathy stood between me and you, and that I were ready and willing to fulfil my engagement with you, would you still say that God alone held your heart?” His expression was one of terror and shrinking. “It is not so, Edith!” he exclaimed. “God forbid that it should be so! I could no more go back to those hopes and wishes of the past than I could be a little boy again!”