"Not want it? What do you mean? Do you suppose that I may not be strong enough for the journey? Don't be afraid of that. I feel strong enough now for any effort. I'll fly with you--anywhere, Brooke." "Fly?" said Brooke; "fly? What, and take you to your friends? And then what? Why, then--a long good-bye! Talbot, I'm too infernally selfish. I'll tell you a secret. Now that the worst is over--now that there doesn't seem to be any real danger--I'll confess that I enjoy this. I don't want it to end. I feel not only like singing, but like dancing. I want to be always living in a tower, or an old windmill, or anywhere--so long as I can look up and see you, I don't want anything more in the world. And when I look up and see Talbot no more--why, then I'll stop singing. For what will life be worth then, when all its sunlight, and bloom, and sweetness, and joy are over, and when they are all past and gone forever? Life! why, Talbot, lad, I never began to know what life could be till I saw you; and do you ask me now to put an end to our friendship?" This was what Brooke said, and then he turned off into a song: "Then this maiden wiped her eyelids With her pocket-handkerchee; Though I grow a yaller spinster I will stick to my Billee! Rite follalol-lol-lol-lol-lido, Rite follalol-lol-lol-lol-lay." After this there followed another prolonged silence. Talbot was now the first to speak. "Brooke," said she, in her low, soft, tremulous voice, which had died down almost to a whisper, "we know the secrets of one another's hearts. Oh, Brooke! Brooke! why have we never met before? Oh, Brooke! how strangely we have drifted together! How much we have learned about each other! Is Fate so bitter as to make us drift away, after--after--" Her voice died away altogether, and she turned her face aside and bowed down her head. Brooke looked at her for a moment, and seemed about to take her hand, but he conquered this impulse and resolutely averted his eyes. "Don't know, I'm sure," said he, at last, with an affectation of airy indifference. "It would take a man with a head as long as a horse to answer such a question as that. Talbot, lad, you shouldn't plunge so deep into the mysteries of being." After this there was another silence, and then Talbot looked up at Brooke with her deep, dark glance, and began to speak in a calm voice, which, however, did not fail to thrill through the heart of Brooke as he listened.