it is religious," replied Leam, impervious and unconvinced. "I like better to tell the truth and call things by their right names."

"And you cannot feel that we are little children walking in the dark, and that we must accept by faith?" said Alick.

She shook her head; then answered with a certain tone of triumph in her voice:

tend

"Well, yes, it is the dark; so let you understand when you do not.

it be the dark, and do not preDo not say God made you ill in

one breath, and in another that He is kind. It is silly."

"Now, my boy, don't excite yourself!" said Mrs. Corfield, bustling into the room and noting how the thin cheek had flushed and how bright and feverish the hollow eyes of her invalid were looking. "You know the doctor says you are not to be excited or tired. It is the worst thing in the world for you."

"I am neither, mother; don't alarm yourself," he answered; "but I must have a little talk with Leam. I have not seen her for so long! How long is it, mother?"

"Well, my dear, you have been ill for over ten weeks," she said, as she went to the window with a sudden gasp.

"Ten weeks gone out of my life!" he replied.

"We have all been sorry," said Leam a little vaguely. His eyes grew moist. He was weak and easily moved.

"Were you very sorry?" he asked.

"Very," she answered, for her quite warmly.

"Then you did not want me to die?"

He said this with a yearning look, raising himself again on his elbow to meet her eyes more straightly.

"Want you to die?" she repeated in astonishment.

I want you to die? I want you to get well and live."
He took her hand again.

"Why should

"God bless you!" he said, and turned his face to the pillow to conceal that he was weeping.

Again that grey look of remembrance passed over her face. She

knew now what he had meant.

"No," she said slowly; "I do not want you to die. You are good, and would harm no one."

After this visit Leam saw Alick whenever she called at the house; which however was not so often as heretofore, and week by week became more seldom. Something was growing up in her heart against him that made his presence a discomfort. It was not fear nor moral dislike, but it was a personal distaste that threatened to become unconquerable. She hated to be with him; hated to see his face looking at her with such yearning tenderness as abashed her somehow and made her lower her eyes; hated his endeavours to convert her to an orthodox acceptance of mysteries she could not understand and of explanations she could not believe; hated his sadness, hated his joy; she only wished that he would

1

go away and leave her alone. What did he mean? What did he want? He was changing from the blushing, awkward, subservient dog of his early youth, and from the still subservient if also more argumentative pastor of these later days alike; and she did not like the new Alick who was gradually creeping into the place of the old.

When Mrs. Corfield spoke of taking him to the sea for change of air her heart bounded as if a weight had been suddenly removed, and she said, "Yes, he ought to go," so warmly that the mother was surprised, wondering if she cared so much for him that the idea of his getting good elated her beyond herself, and made her forget her usual reserve.

She instinctively contrived not to see him alone now when she went to Steel's Corner during his tedious convalescence; for the poor fellow mended but slowly, if surely. Either she had only a short time to stay, and so stood for a moment making serious talk impossible; or she took little Fina with her; or may be she entangled Mrs. Corfield in the conversation so that she should not leave them alone; the vague fear and distaste possessing her making her strangely rusée and on the alert. But one day she was caught. It had to come, and it was only a question of time. She knew that, as we know when our doom is upon us.

Leam had not intended to go in to-day, but Alick, who was in the garden rejoicing in the warmth and freshness of this tender April noontide, came to meet her at the second gate, and asked her to come and sit with him on the garden seat, there where the budding lilacs began to show their bloom, and there where they had sat on that fatal day when she had hidden the little phial in her hair, and bade him tell her of flowers, till she tired.

She hesitated, and was on the point of refusing, when he took her by the upper part of her arm as if to hold her.

"Do!" he pleaded. "I want to say something to you!"

"I have no time to stay," she answered, shrinking from his touch. "Yes, yes! time enough for all I have to say," he returned. “I beg you to come with me to-day, Leam! I beg it! and I do not often ask a favour of you!"

There was something in his manner that seemed to compel Leam to consent, in spite of herself. True, he besought, but also he seemed almost to command; and if he did not command, then his earnestness was so strong that she was forced to yield to it. Trembling, but with her proud little head held straight-wondering what was coming, and vaguely conscious that whatever it was it would be pain-Leam let him take her to the garden seat where the budding lilacs spoke of spring-time freshness and summer beauty. Alick was trembling too, but from excitement, not from fear. He had made up his mind now, and when he had once resolved he was not wavering. He would ask her to share his life, accept his love; and he would thus take on himself half the burden of her sin. This was how he felt it. If he married her, knowing all that he knew, he would make himself the partner of her crime, because he would

accept her past like her present-like her future; and thus he would be equally guilty with her before God. But he would trust to prayer and the Supreme Mercy to save her and him. He would carry no merits of devotion as his own claim, but he would have freed her of half her guilt, and he would be content to bear his own portion of punishment for this unfathomable gain. It was the man's love, but also the soul's passionate promise of sacrifice and redemption that gave him boldness to plead, power to ask for a grace to which, had this deep stain of sin never tainted her, he would not have dared to aspire. But, as it was, his love was her greater safety; and what he gained in earthly joy he would lose in spiritual peace, while her partial forgiveness would be bought by the loss of his security of salvation. Not that she understood all this, or ever should; but it gave him courage.

"Do

"When you first saw me, Leam, after my illness, you said that you wanted me to live," he began in a low voice, husky with emotion. you mean this?"

"Yes," she said, looking straight before her.

"Live for you?" he asked.

"For us all," she answered.

"No, not for us all, for you," he returned with insistance.

"That would be silly," said Leam quietly. "I am not the only person in the world. You have your mother."

"For my mother, perhaps; but for the world, nothing. You are the world to me," said Alick. "Give me your love, and I care for nothing else. Tell me you will be my wife, and I can live then-live as nothing else can make me! Leam! can you love me, dear? I have loved you from the first moment I saw you! Will you be my wife?"

"Your wife!" cried Leam with an involuntary gesture of repulsion. "You are dreaming!"

"No, no! I am in full earnest! Tell me that you love me, Leam. Oh! I believe that you do! Surely I have not deceived myself so far! Why should you have come every day, every day, as you have done, if you do not love me?—yes, you do, I know you do! Say so, Leam, my darling, my beloved, and put me out of my misery of suspense!"

"You are my good friend. I love you like a friend; but a wifethat is different," faltered Leam.

"Yes, but it will come if you try!" pleaded Alick, shifting his point from confidence to entreaty. "Won't you try to love me as I love you, Leam Won't you try to love me as a wife loves her husband?"

She turned away.

"I cannot," she answered in a low voice, yet firm and distinct. It was a voice in which even the most sanguine must have recognised the accent of hopeless certainty, inevitable despair.

"Leam! it will be your salvation!" cried Alick, taking her hands. He meant her spiritual salvation, not her personal safety; it was a prayer, not a threat.

"You would not force me by anything you may know?" asked Leam in the same low, firm, distinct voice. "Not even for safety, Alick!"

"Which I would buy with my own!" he answered; "with my eternal salvation!"

"And

"I am not worthy of such love," said Leam trembling. oh dear Alick, do not blame me, but I cannot return it," she added piteously.

She saw him start and heard him moan when she said this; but for a moment he was silent. He seemed half stunned as if by a heavy blow, but one that he was doing his best to bear.

"Tell me so again, Leam. Let me be convinced," he then said with pathetic calmness, looking into her face. "You cannot love me?-never?

never?

"Never!" she said, her voice breaking.

Alick covered his face in his hands, and she saw the tears trickle slowly through his fingers. He made no complaint, no protestation; only covered up his face and prayed, weeping, recognising his fate.

She was sorry and heart-struck. She felt cruel, selfish, ungrateful, but for all that she could not yield nor say that she would marry him, trying to love him. Confused images of something dearer than this as the love of her life passed before her mind. They were images without recognisable form or tangible substance, but they were the true love, and this was not like them. No, she could not yield. Sorry as she might be for him, and was, she could not promise to marry him.

"Yes," he then said after a pause, lifting up his wan face, tearstained and disordered, but making a sad attempt to smile; "yes, dear Leam, I was, as you say, dreaming. We shall always be friends though, brother and sister, as we have been, to the end of our lives, shall we not?"

“Yes,” was her answer, tears in her own eyes and a kind of wonder at her hardness running through her repugnance.

"Thank you, darling! thank you. If you want a friend, and I can be that friend and can serve you, you will come to me, will you not? You may want me some day, and you know that I shall not fail you. Don't you know that, my royal Leam?"

"I am sure of you," she half whispered, shuddering. To be in his power and to have rejected him! It all seemed very terrible and confused to Leam, to whom things complex and entangled were abhorrent.

"And now forget all this. I was only dreaming, dear. Why no, of course you could not have married me-never could-never! never! I know that well enough now. You see I have been ill," nervously plucking at his hands, "and have had strange fancies, and I do not know myself or anything about me quite yet. But forget it all. It was only a sick fancy, and I thought what did not exist."

"I am sorry to have hurt you, even in a fancy," said Leam, giving a sigh of relief. "I do not like to see you unhappy, Alick. You are so good to me!"

"And to the end of my life. I shall be what I have been," he said earnestly. "You can trust me, Leam!"

"I am sorry I have hurt you," she said again, bending forward and looking up into his face. "But it was only a dream, was it not?"

pleadingly.

He smiled pitifully. "Yes, dear, only a dream," he answered, turning away his head. After a while he took her hand and looked into "And now it has passed," he said, calm that she should not

her face.

be sorry.