This compliment fairly merited the reward which Eros immediately claimed and took for it, and which, by its potent effect upon both giver and receiver, made speech seem impertinent for a time. Psyche sat gazing out across the darkened snow with her tender brown eyes, and Eros looked fondly on her, thinking that he loved her more than anything in the world, and that life would be a blank without her. Surely, were she to be taken from him, all his light and warmth would depart along with her. That passage in Mortimer's letter which suggested that it might be well sometimes for lovers to be parted had received his unqualified, though unuttered, disapproval. Why should such a thing have been written? Often, since Psyche had read it to him, Eros had resolved to dismiss the idea from his mind; but such is the perversity of human minds that the idea remained in spite of him. It made him feel now and then really almost uneasy. The feeling, of course, was a morbid one; common sense and wholesome reason forbade him to entertain it. Had he no more confidence in Providence than to believe that it would take his Psyche from him--his Psyche, who had grown up with him from infancy? Would the good God be so cruel as to deprive him--and at this moment of all others--of the companionship of her whom he so loved? But the misgiving was unworthy of him. If he could not forget it, why then he would face it, and face it down. He bent towards Psyche, and discovered, by some method known to lovers, that her eyes were wet with tears. When Love is in supreme command, the soul is more tenderly alive to various influences, and hence more prone to sadness of a certain kind, than at any other epoch of life. But Eros had never understood Psyche's constitutional tendency to melancholy, and just now he found it especially inopportune. "What makes you unhappy?" he exclaimed. "Aren't we together, and haven't we everything we want? And ought not this evening to be the most joyful we ever yet spent?" She leaned her head on his shoulder, hiding a sigh. "I was wondering, dear," she said, "whether, when we go to the real Paradise, we shall meet and know each other there as we do now. Do you believe we shall?" There were few problems too profound for the plummet of Eros's common sense to sound them. "Certainly we shall, my dear!" he answered emphatically. "What put such a question into your head?" "But shall you love me then? And shall I be your own wife there, Eros, as I am to be here?" "I really don't see the use, my dear little Psyche, of bothering our heads with such gratuitous puzzles as that. There's quite enough to attend to in this life, without trying to guess what may happen to us in the next. For my part, it's enough to know that we love each other in the body, and are to be husband and wife here in this farmhouse. There'll be time enough to speculate about other states when we are in them."