Then after a moment of silence dear to both their hearts, she drew back to give her friend one other look, and quietly said: "His heart is mine now, Ermentrude, wholly and truly mine. And so you would have it be, I am sure. Life looks fair to me and very sweet; but however fair, however sweet, that life is yours if ever you want it and when you want it. The time may come--one never knows--when I can pay you back this debt. Till then, let there be perfect trust and perfect love between us. Give me your hand upon it--not just your lips--for I speak as men speak when they mean to keep their word." Their eyes met, their hands clasped; then the bridegroom drew away his bride, and Ermentrude turned with bowed head and glistening eyes, to enter upon the new life awaiting her in ways she had yet to tread. * * * * * The second series of episodes opens with the meeting of a man and woman on a rustic bridge spanning a Swiss chasm. They are strangers to each other, yet both instinctively pause and a flush of intuitive feeling dyes the cheek of each. The eternal, ever-recurring miracle has happened. He sees Woman for the first time, though he had thought himself in love before and had wandered thus far in an effort to forget. So, likewise, with her. She had had her fancies, or rather her one fancy; but when in strolling along this road ahead of her party she saw rising between her and the glorious landscape which had hitherto filled her eye the fine masculine head and perfect figure of Carleton Roberts, this fancy floated from her mind like the veriest thistledown, leaving it free to expand in fuller hopes and deeper joys than visit many women even when they think they love. Alas! why in that instant of mutual revelation had not the further grace been given them of quick catastrophe shutting the door upon a future of which neither could then dream or sense the coming doom. It was not to be. He passed, she passed, and for the time the look they gave each other was all; but the world had been glorified for them both--and Destiny waited. * * * * * "Good looks? Yes; but nothing else; very ordinary connections, very. A little money, true. Her uncle, whom by the way I judge you have not seen, will leave her a few thousands; but meanwhile he is a fixture--will not leave her or let her leave him, which is a misfortune since in a social way he is simply impossible. No sort of match for you, Roberts. Cut and run while there is time; that's my advice to you, given in the most friendly spirit." "Thank you. As I have but just met Miss Taylor, don't you think such advice is a little premature?" "No, I don't. She is a woman who must be loved or left; that's all. You've heard me." Did Carleton Roberts heed these words? No. What man in the thrall of his first romance ever did. "You love me, Ermentrude?" "I love you, Carleton." "For a day, for a month or for a year?" he smiled.