I had missed my bride from the little throng in the quaint house beyond. I had stolen out to seek her. Instinctively I had turned to the old arbor above the river, where her hours of meditation had always been passed. It was there I had found her as a child, when I came to bring her father's dying message. It was there I had asked her to become my wife. It was there we three had first stood together. For a week before the wedding she had been in a strange mood, tearless, but nervous, and sad! Still, it had not seemed to me an unnatural mood in such a woman, on the eve of her marriage. Fate is ironical. I remembered that I was serenely happy as I sped up the hill in search of her, and so sure that I knew where to find her. Light scudding clouds crossed the track of the moon, which, with a broadly smiling face, rolled up the heavens at a spinning pace, now appearing, now disappearing behind the flying clouds. I was humming gaily as I strode along the narrow path. Nothing tugged at my heart strings to warn me of approaching sorrow. There was no signal in all nature to prepare me for the end in a complete shipwreck of all my dreams. The peace about me gave no hint of its cynicism. Nothing, either within or without, hinted that my hours of happiness and content were running out rapidly to the last sand! I had reached the shallow steps that led up the knoll to the arbor! At that moment the clouds were swept off from the face of the moon, and the white light fell full on her. But she was not alone. She rested in the arms of my friend, as, God help me, she had never rested in mine--in an abandon that was only too eloquent. What was said? Who but God knows that now? What do men like us, who have thought themselves one in all things, until one love rends them asunder, say at such a time? As for me, I cannot recall a word! I did not even see his face. I think he saw mine no more. We seemed to see into the soul of each other, through the very heart of that frail woman between us, that slender creature in the bridal dress, who sank down before us, as if the colliding passions of two strong men had killed her. It was he who raised her up. His hands placed her in my arms. No need to say that she was blameless. I knew all that. It was only Fate after all, that I blamed, yet the fatalist is human. He suffers in living like other men--sometimes more, because he refuses to struggle in the clutches of Chance! As I gazed down into her white face, I heard the steps of my friend, even above the roaring of the river, as he strode down the hillside, out of my life! And I know not even to-day which was the bitterest grief, the loss of my faith in being loved, or the passing from my heart of that man! Of the pain of the night that followed, only the silence and our own hearts knew. Love and passion are so twinned in some hours of life that one cannot distinguish in himself the one from the other.