In the first, pitying her embarrassment in his presence, responding, as he believed, to her unspoken wish, he rather avoided her; or, when they met, addressed her only with a grave and formal courtesy. The inevitable change happened one day when they chanced upon one another near the green arbour sacred to an unforgettable memory. She was standing there alone, looking down upon her own lily-pond, when he came upon her, and he would have withdrawn, with a low-spoken apology, only she stayed him. He stopped, his every vein tingling, beside her. She did not speak for a moment; and then she looked up in his face, with a sudden desperate resolve in her eyes. “That day,” she said hurriedly--“when I spoke to you at last--I had meant it to show I was sorry for my rudeness. Why did you snub me about my lilies? I think you love the children better than you do me.” “Love!” He repeated the word like one stupefied. She was so unsophisticated, so incapable of maintaining, in the face of apparent unkindness, the pose to which her conscience had condemned her, that she was unable to qualify her reproach by a word. He stood as if stunned; then very gently sought her unresisting hand, and raised it to his lips. “If I might love you!” he whispered, imprisoning the soft palm, and gathering it fearfully to his breast. “But it is madness.” “I thought you meant to show me so,” she answered--“that that was why you avoided me.” “And if I did--what else was possible?” A long ecstatic sigh quivered from his lips. “I must go,” he said. “It is the only way. You must forget me and forgive me.” He bent suddenly, and looked in her face; and his voice broke. “O, my love, my love--keep back your tears!” Gently she released her hand, turning away from him. And he strode a step or two, hither and thither, in unbearable pain. “Why have they laid this cruelty on us?” he said. “I cannot live and endure it. Tell me to go.” “I cannot.” So near inaudible--so whispered from a bursting heart! He felt as if his own heart would break with the rapture of it. Again he turned from her, and strode forth and back. “Prometheus!” he cried. “Give me my fire! I defy the gods! Afloat on the long drift of dreams--everything surrendered; everything believed possible; no to-morrow to this ecstasy. Isabel, we will be sweet lovers, my sweet love.” One beautiful moment, in that embowered place, he held her in his arms; then put her gently from him. “That I must teach you duplicity!” he said--“so truthful, so innocent! But we must be circumspect, or the dream will end. It is all a dream, is it not, dear love?” She could not kill the happiness in her eyes; but she made them grave for his behoof. “If we might talk,” she said; “knowing what we know, but never alluding to it; keeping for ever that dear secret--even from one another.” “For ever!” he said. “Well, what have we to do with time? I would rather be mad than sane. Talk on, sweet music.”