They walked on together through the dreamy November haze--both feeling as in a dream--without speaking, but each in some strange manner vaguely conscious of the spirit of the other's thought, of a close sympathy that was fast drawing them together. It was as if their hearts beat, their souls sung, in unison, to some awful music from another sphere. The streets and the people were no longer with them. So it was, that when at last he spoke, the words were expected by her. She seemed to have felt their meaning before they came. They had been led up to by the unspoken emotions of either. "Oh, Miss King, if you could only confide in me, and make me your friend! I would die, to be able to drive away that cloud from your mind, if I could only see you happy and smiling.... All that beautiful youth of yours, with its sweet possibilities, being destroyed by these dark phantoms! Oh, Mary, for God's sake, trust in me! Have you guessed how I love you? You must have done so. You fill all my thoughts. You know that you are everything in the world to me.... Oh, my sweet! my sweet! that I could make you throw yourself on my love. I believe I would make you happy. I would understand you, Mary, and we would make all your sadness go. We would go right away from the streets for a time, and walk through the green fields hand in hand like children again. In the bright, pure country we should drive all these phantoms right away; our human love would drive them right away. Mary! Mary!--" and he stopped and seized her two hands in his, carried away by his emotion. They were standing by the railings of the garden of a deserted square, and the rays of a lamp fell full on her pale face. He had raised an image of wonderful joys to her mind--but, oh! so impossible--so impossible! She trembled in his grasp. She dared not raise her eyes to meet his. "Mary! O Mary! can it be true? Do you care for me; do you love me a little?" She could not preserve that outward calm any longer, with all that storm raging within her. She was stifling with it, and for an answer burst into hysterical sobs. "Oh! my dear! my dear!" He folded her in his arms, and his passionate kisses were on her eyes and on her mouth. Then, with a strength that surprised him, she suddenly thrust him off, and retreating a few yards back, stared at him with eyes dilated with horror and anguish.