He saw Joan often that month of May. The misgivings that had haunted him often had died to an infrequent whisper, and the fascination of the girl’s soul held him as in an Elysian dream. The hills and woods beyond Rilchester were solitary as Eden, and humanity rarely vexed them by intruding on this Arcady. Gabriel in his visionary state had put all mundane prudence from his ken. When near to Joan he felt that he had no foe in the wide world, that he hated no man, envied none. All was peace and a great calm as of beautiful purity and enduring love. For days he existed like a prophet in a desert, filled with a species of spiritual exaltation. It was an excellent mood enough, but one hardly suited to the cynicism of Saltire society. Such sentiments as inspired Gabriel’s brain spelled madness, or worse, to the discriminating glance of the multitude. It is unwise to go star-gazing amid the gutters of an unclean town. With a simplicity that was even pathetic, these two children formulated the creed that was to stand to them for the governance of the future. Their favorite haunt that spring was the old Roman amphitheatre on the hills, an emerald hollow clasped in the shadows of antique trees. Hollies grew there, lustrous and luxuriant; pines and beeches and solemn yews. On one green slope a wild cherry showered snow upon the grass. Wood violets stare azure-eyed from banks that shone with gold. Where the eastern gate had once stood a great pine towered like an Eastern minaret, prayerful on the hills. One morning Gabriel had received the letter he had long expected, a letter from Ophelia warning him of her early return to The Friary. It was a curt, cold document, much in contrast to the erotic vaporings he had received of yore. The same morning he had spread the letter before Joan in the Roman amphitheatre, and out of the largeness of her love she had found power to strengthen him for the months to come. It is no light task for a woman to advise a man against her own heart; yet it is a task in which heroic women have ever excelled. “You believe in yourself once more,” she said to him, as he sat at her feet on the turf bank under the shadow of the trees. “Perhaps,” he answered her; “you have reinspired me. I am prepared to face fate with greater equanimity, be it hard and unlovely.” “Yet the gleam from afar, the divine aim, these are everywhere.” “Yes, even in a diseased home.” Joan had sat a long while in thought with that strange solemnity upon her face that made her womanliness so divine. Her eyes were like the eyes of one who has looked long at a picture afar off. There were pathetic lines about her mouth. She had spoken with Gabriel of his wife and home, spoken like the great-hearted woman that she was, strong words for others to the annihilation of self. “When she comes back to you, dear—” The man turned and looked at the face purposeful and pale in the deep shadows. “Yes.” “You will be yourself to her.” “I will try.”