He would have clasped her to him but she, who had listened with her heart beating so happy-fast that it would scarce let her draw breath, held him away with soft hands: “Oh, David,” she panted, “think back on that dream again!” “It is gone,” he answered, smiling, “the reality is so much sweeter!” She stood still holding him from her and yet to her, with a delicate touch. His words had suddenly cleared before her a golden path: the heart that loves has its own flashes of genius.—Yes, it should be so, she resolved. She drew a long breath. Without another word she passed her arm within his again and led him on. He allowed himself to be guided whither she would in glad obedience; all she did this hour was well done for him. It was full night when they left the dim aisles of trees and the high sighing choirs, and emerged into the windswept fields. Ellinor looked up at the sky: “It will be a night of stars,” she said. “Thank God!” “Ah, love,” he answered her, “my heaven is on earth to-night!” She nodded her head, with a flickering enigmatic smile; and in another spell of silence she brought him, through the shrubbery tangle, to that spot where, across the ivied ruined walls and the spaces of the Herb-Garden, the light from her gable-window had been wont to shine out through the summer nights. “David,” she whispered—he could feel how she trembled beside him as she spoke, could almost hear the flutter of her heart through her voice—“will you do all I bid you to-night?” “Surely,” he made answer with infinite gentleness. “Then, David, will you wait till from here you can see my light, the light in the window of my old room! And then, David, when the light shines, will you come to me there?” Close though they stood together in the gloom, neither could see the other’s face but as a dim whiteness. Yet, at these words, Ellinor felt how the serenity that her husband’s countenance had worn all the evening was broken up and swept away by a storm of passion—a passion as wide in its strength and yet as tender as the wild west gale that now in its rush embraced them and passed on, hymning. He bowed his head, because he could not trust himself in words, and because the other answer he would have given her, the answer of straining arms and eager silent lips, she once again eluded. The next instant he was alone with the choir of the elements, the great gathering company of the stars, and his own tumultuous thoughts. Ellinor was back in the little room that had held her as child and widow; that now received her, a bride trembling on the verge of joy.