How tall and stalwart Ralph looked as he seized my hand in his strong grasp! I remembered that Mildred had once likened him to a young Norse god, and I did not wonder. As for Mildred, after the first greetings were over and we had ensconced ourselves on a _tête-à-tête_ for an evening’s talk, I soon perceived that a certain indefinable change had come over her. I could hardly tell what it was at first. There was a vivacity and charm and sprightliness that I had never seen before. I had always thought her charming, though perhaps a bit too reserved and dignified. Some people had thought her cold, but I knew better. Now all the latent passion and warmth of her nature had been aroused, and I saw that she had possibilities of which I had not dreamed. “What is it, Mildred?” I asked, after Ralph had left us alone. “Somehow you seem—I scarcely know what to say—you seem so young and happy, as if”— Mildred finished, “as if I had been drinking of the elixir of life and had become a new creature. Yes, dear,” she added, “and so I have. Oh, I am so happy, so unspeakably happy!” Then suddenly turning impulsively and throwing her arms around me, her face shining with a new light, she exclaimed, “How I wish every one else were as happy too. “Sometimes it seems as if it were too much, as if in this sorrowful world I had no right to be so supremely happy. So often in these last months,” she added musingly, “I have said to myself those lines that seemed written for me alone: “‘The face of all the world is changed, I think, Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul, ... Betwixt me and the dreadful outer brink Of obvious death, where I, who thought to sink, Was caught up into love and taught the whole Of life in a new rhythm....’ “Yes,” continued Mildred after a little pause, and her eyes grew soft and tender, “a year ago I thought that love would never come, and I now sometimes tremble at the thought of what I came so near missing. I do not know how, once having learned the blessedness of this love, I could have courage to live if Ralph were taken and I left. Oh,” she added in a broken whisper, as for a moment she bowed her head in her hands, “if when death comes it will only mercifully take us both together.” Ah me! How little we both dreamed in what way that prayer was to be answered. Presently she raised her head and continued, while her warm arms were about me again and my head lay pillowed on her shoulder. “Ralph is so kind, so good, so tender, so unselfish! Really, at first he seemed almost sorry when I told him my secret and he learned that he had married an heiress, as if he had lost the joy of working for me. How he thanked me for keeping the secret!