When Graham had first seen her lying in the fire-light, with cool, deep eyes, before the light of love had dawned in her flower face, she had seemed to him like a perfect white rose. Then the rose flushed palely, as the love-light trembled to a flame; and he brought her flowers of the color of the sea-shells, and she wore them in her hair. Last of all, he laid at her feet deep-red damask rosebuds; and these she placed on her white breast, where they bloomed and died in a single night. He had painted her by the waves, as he had once seen her on that strange day when death had seemed so near and life so beautiful. He had painted her standing at the sea edge with pallid roses in her little hands, her graceful head set about with the same soft-hued flowers, and a single crimson rose lying lightly over her heart. He had hung the sketch against the wall where the sunlight fell upon it early in the morning; and Millicent had bade him remember, while he slept or waked, that she was near him. CHAPTER XV. "It cannot be that love so deep as mine Could fail to stay you like ethereal wine." When he first understood the full import of the dreadful story, John Graham had been dazed with grief. He had sought distraction from his torturing thoughts in action, and had spent that first day in wandering through the forest. When he lay down to sleep that night in the lodge, his heart was burdened with the double weight of Millicent’s secret and Millicent’s deceit. He said to himself that they had put an insuperable bar between her and himself. He could have pardoned the disgrace which had befallen her, and was not her fault, but he could never forgive her deceit toward him. The finding of her kerchief the next morning, and the terrible apprehension which the blood-stain had aroused in him, swept away the anger and sorrow from his heart, leaving nothing there but an agonizing fear. This had been, in turn, banished by the joy of finding her alive and unharmed, waiting for him amidst the roses. The great fear had softened the anger in his heart; the sudden happiness exalted his soul from the hell of anguish in which it had dwelt, into a perfect and pure peace. Pride, anger, and resentment were swept away, and love swayed him with its mastery. He knew her now, faulty as she was; and his higher nature forgave her, because of her great love, because of her great wrong. But in his stormy breast the tide of feeling flowed and ebbed; pride had reigned there so long that love could not all at once claim undisputed sway. He could not learn in an instant that pride is born of hell, while love is breathed from heaven. In that strange moment when their two beings had seemed etherealized, he had forgiven her all; but in the days that followed, pride, doubt, and prejudice came forward one by one to do combat with victorious love. It might be that they would conquer in the struggle; it might even be that