"Ah! but, Eros," said she, lifting her gentle face from his shoulder and looking in his eyes, "suppose that I were to die to-night--this very night, before our wedding! Could you be content to wait--could you rest satisfied with the love that we have already loved in this world, and with the knowledge that I was still loving you in Paradise, and would be yours when you came there?" Eros felt an impulse of impatience, which he repressed so far as not to give it words; but he turned his face away. Those theories of delicate tissue and transcendental application, which Psyche was given to entertaining, irritated and silenced him. He loved Psyche, as an honest man should love a woman--better than any other man ever loved a woman, he thought; and what more could be expected of him? Besides, was it not being ungrateful for the blessings in their possession to be borrowing trouble from an improbable or unimaginable condition of things to come? It was really too bad, thought Eros, and he turned his face away and looked down the avenue, leaving Psyche unanswered. It would have been quite dark now but for the whiteness of the snow. The wind was rising, and the window-seat was getting chilly, and Psyche's hand, which still lay in his own, was cold as ice, and she herself seemed to shiver. The blinds must be closed, and they would go back to the fire, for Mortimer might not come till midnight, for all they knew. Stay!--what was that shadow moving this way up the avenue? Was it---- "Psyche! Psyche! look!" cried Eros, starting to his feet in joyous excitement. "That must be--isn't it? Yes, it must be Mortimer--it is our dear old Mort!" "Oh Eros, I believe it is!" she answered, peering tremulously through the darkness. "I can't see clearly; I had a vision of Death--that Death was coming instead of him!" "Death, indeed!" exclaimed Eros, with a laugh. "Let this be a lesson to you, my dear, not to indulge in silly fancies again. But come on! We must receive the dear fellow at the door."