and she wanted to be sure. I do not think it occurred to her that Miss Quayle would refuse Roger. Nor did it occur to me, though never was courtship less like courtships at home. Roger showed less ardor than absorption; he went about the business of life as though Letitia were the air he breathed. He took her, you would say, calmly; but she was the basis of existence. When she was not there he seemed to suffer dumbly, like an animal. I could swear that for a fortnight he spoke no word to her; yet if he had been visibly on his knees, his attitude could not have been clearer. His Polynesians got drunk in peace, those days.

And Letitia? No girl in my world has ever treated a lover, declared or undeclared, as she treated Roger. She turned to him for everything. We picknicked in deep, vine-hung ravines above frigid and shadowed pools; and I have seen her, without coquetry, without affectation, bend her head forward to drink from a cup he held, or feed him a roseapple with her own fingers. They clambered down exotic trails hand in hand, and stood together like children to gaze at a waterfall. Not a hint of passion; only that beautiful and calm clinging to each other. My constant presence did not embarrass them; if it was Arden, I was their faithful fool. Do you wonder that my dream was so long undisturbed, or that, in spite of all that came after, I look back upon it as the most beautiful thing in life-a thing (sometimes I desperately feel) that fate should never have dared to touch?

The wonder of it is, of course, that that fortnight could ever have been. Even I, completely obsessed with the notion that we were existing outside of history, knew that it could not last like this. A breath suffices to destroy so delicate a beauty. I knew the breath would come. Even in tales, it always does. We pay tribute forever to the Eumenides.

All those enchanted days Aunt Miriam said nothing. She left Letitia to Roger and to me though Letitia spent many an hour by Aunt Miriam's side, and God knows what they talked of. That Aunt Miriam's was not the first disturbing breath, I know. Sixty years of self-control had made Aunt Miriam

a marvel of a woman. She was, in this case, the more of a marvel that she had no romance in her. I have been bitter, very bitter, about it all; but, strangely enough, never, in my most sky-defying moods, bitter against Aunt Miriam.

The disturbing breath came, as I knew it would and must; came when Roger Twining's cup spilled over and his passion declared itself. Disturbing, at first, only in the sense that the manner of perfection changed; that the tenderness quickened and flashed and kindled into a romance so poignant that my eyes smarted in beholding it. By what slow gradations or what swift transmutation, known only to their inmost selves, it came, I cannot say. Though two people were never more meetly chaperoned, they were sometimes alone; and I fancy that change could have become conscious only when they were together in solitude. They came back from the volcanic headland where I had first found Roger petulantly staring, hand in hand, and ranged themselves like decorous children before Aunt Miriam and

me.

The flaming sunset was behind them; the sudden twilight was already darkening the remoter corners of the verandah. Hand in hand, with soft, awe-struck voices, they told us that they were going to be married. It was the gentlest climax I have ever known, yet I felt as if something perfect had passed away. The marvel, as I have said before, was that the previous fortnight could ever have been. Roger Twining fell manfully in love at sight; nothing but the perfect concord of the two creatures could have kept him like a child with her just so long as she wanted to be a child. You pay for concord like that between man and woman-pay with sacrifices laid on the immemorial altar of sex. Love itself is a fever; and, as if that were not enough, the irrelevant world steps in to point out that marriage is a practical matter. With love announced, the world, the flesh, and the devil troop in. Small wonder that priests bolster marriage up with sacraments!

As luck would have it, Professor Quayle had gone, in a motor-boat, to cruise for a few days among outlying uninhabited islands and far reefs whence

he could gather polypi at will. Letitia was under the nominal chaperonage of the British consul's wife, but it had been arranged that she should spend a night or two at the Mission. To this Aunt Miriam now objected. Letitia

must not be her guest, she told Roger, until Professor Quayle had sanctioned the betrothal. The flesh had come in, you see, already, and here was the world. The devil got his innings later. Roger affected to be shocked by the conventions-what true lover is not shocked by them?-but Aunt Miriam was adamant. Letitia succumbed dumbly, like a hurt child. It seemed wanton cruelty to part them. That Professor Quayle should refuse Roger was incredible. It was mere superstition, vain as any tabu. I took it upon myself to tell Mrs. Twining this; but she did not move a hair's-breadth from her position. Until Letitia's father could give his consent, she would not have Letitia under her roof as Roger's betrothed. She owed it to Professor Quayle. So we took Letitia down to the town again, instead of keeping her with us on the heights.

The prohibition was purely formal, as even Aunt Miriam admitted, and Letitia was at liberty to come each morning and "spend the day." So few of those days of probation there were only three, all told, between the engagement and Professor Quayle's return. Yet, with their atmosphere of trial, of waiting, we seemed to be taking something indefinite, equivocal, painful, into our lungs with each breath we drew. Gone was the happy oxygen of the idyllic fortnight. Sometimes I gazed up at the low-hung stars and clenched my fists and vowed it shouldn't pass; that one instant should suffice for Quayle's consent, and that then Letitia and Roger should wander back hand in hand, for a time, to their Eden. I, their faithful fool, would stand guard between them and the world. Curiously, you see, I did not crave an immediate marriage for them; I craved, rather, a return of the uncapturable days. Nothing had ever been so beautiful as the fortnight of their idyll. Nothing-I set it down with an unflinching pen-ever has been. I stand committed to that.

They stuck-the dears!-more closely to Aunt Miriam during those days. The world and the flesh, as I was saying, had got in their work. They were not so happy as they had been, though love was in every sweet and modest gesture. I knew-don't ask me how-that they themselves (even as I, the spectator) were looking back rather than forward. Better, infinitely, marriage than this; but, oh, best of all, the unreal days forever past. Their ardor was the tenderest thing imaginable. Even Roger seemed only to want Letitia's hand to hold— quietly, peacefully, in our presence. It was not mawkish, for there was no ulterior suggestion in that simple, mutual caress. Friends, you would have said, if friends ever had just that hunger. But I knew better than that, for my room was next to Roger's, and I knew how he paced his wide porch, sleepless, through the night, and how he was never himself again until the morning when Letitia came stepping through the garden, bringing calm with her. They were bad, those three days of the professor's absence, but so cunningly arranged that each hour was tolerable, almost desirable compared with the one that followed it. In all that stillness and sweetness events progressed with catastrophic speed. It seemed as though an unseen hurricane drove us on, though the Trade never ceased its gentle rhythm.

It was the second evening, and the last savored hour before Letitia must descend to the hospitality of the consul's wife. Mrs. Twining stirred the scented air with some faint rebuke of Roger for neglect of duty. He answered, defending himself. Then Aunt Miriam turned to Letitia to make her peace.

"I don't see why you shouldn't go down to the school to-morrow, my dear. You can't know too soon about the work that you will share if you marry Roger.' "Oh, but I couldn't." The girl stopped, as if to find a tone even gentler than that first murmur of hers. "You see, I don't believe any of it."

Aunt Miriam gave no sign of what must have been to her a terrible shock. A strong woman, very. "You mean that you are not a Christian, Letitia?”

"A Christian? Oh no. I've never been to any church. Father has no re

ligion, and of course I think as he does." "You poor child!"

It must have been Letitia Quayle's beauty that wrung this groan from Mrs. Twining, for on matters of faith she was uncompromising. I felt sick.

"Did you know this, Roger?" His aunt turned to him.

"It never occurred to me to tell him," Letitia threw in. "Does it matter, Roger?"

Twining answered, slowly, heavily, "Not the least bit in the world, my dear."

"You see." The girl turned to Mrs. Twining. "He says it doesn't matter. "But, Letitia"- Aunt Miriam falAunt Miriam faltered for an instant, then went on"how could you, an atheist, marry a Christian missionary? A wife must be a helpmeet."

I breathed more easily now that the fatal word was out; it had not been pronounced before, and it was inevitable that some time it should be.

"I was brought up on all those books Roger has in there. I couldn't believe the Christian religion-though of course it is a very nice religion. I didn't know I should have to teach it. I knew Roger would have to, but I supposed I should just stay at home and love him." Then, with a stifled desperation (but all so gentle pianissimo): "I haven't thought about marriage much. I've only thought about Roger. And-forgive me, Mrs. Twining-if Roger doesn't mind, need you? He is a missionary himself, you see. He must know best." Then she tried for mirth. "If Roger throws me over -why, then, we shan't have to bother with asking father, shall we? It will all be out of the way before he gets back."

Roger leaned over and grasped Letitia's hand. Mrs. Twining rose from her deep chair and paced the wide verandah once, twice, three times, the length of it. Then she stopped before the pair and spoke, and I knew she was trying not to sound harsh:

"Roger will convert you."

The two young things started. They had already had time to forget.

"Oh no, I shan't, Aunt Miriam. don't want her different in any way.' I, of course, said nothing. The idyll was spoiling slowly before my eyes, at

VOL. CXXXVI.-No. 811.-7

tacked first here, then there, by insidious, destructive agents. But the hero and heroine were perfect still. How long would it be before the poison ate inreached the heart of the idyll, and them?

That night I had two sleepless housemates, I knew; I could hear Aunt Miriam walking about her room.

But

Mrs. Twining was a strong woman. She said nothing to me; she bade Roger good-bye when he went off to the school as naturally as if his religious integrity were not threatened. She greeted Letitia with a serenity that was almost sweetness. Only I, perhaps, knew how deep was her disturbance, for I caught her replacing Primitive Paternity on Roger's shelves with a little disgusted push. I did not know but that she might call on me to be devil's advocate; to expound to her how one might be nonChristian and yet not heathen. apparently she was waiting for Quayle's return before making any move. Twining himself, that day, seemed untroubled. He had not yet awaked from his dream. Letitia, too, seemed unconscious. It was only Aunt Miriam and I who, under a sunny sky, put up helpless hands against the coming storm. I was not shocked, as she was, by Letitia's nonreligiousness. It hit me in quite another place. Roger Twining was not any too enamoured of his profession, as I well knew; it might be that Letitia would ruin it utterly in his eyes. And if Uncle Ephraim (stout old son of Kingsborough) was a portentous ghost to me, who had never seen him, what must he be to Roger, bowed down under his burden of gratitude-and to Aunt Miriam, who had been flesh of his flesh and soul of his sturdy soul? Only three days before, I had walked in Arden with the untroubled pair. And already my fourth-dimensional world was receding into the original myth. The slow sun gave no sign; but the moon, past the full and rising later each evening, seemed to be marking off the stages of the legend. That very night we should sit in darkness, and we should escort Letitia home, each of us with a lantern in his hand. . . Believe me, the moon is the real timekeeper; it is she who marks our human intervals.

It came very suddenly, that night, as we sat looking at the stars. By "it" I By "it" I mean-oh, it is very hard to tell-the real irruption of the devil, perhaps. The world and the flesh, with their simultaneous utterance of the word "marriage,' had had their turn, and they had not been able to shatter the dream. The devil came in, I suppose, with Letitia's paganism (if you can call it that); but that was only his formal entrance, his conventional cue. We were all breathing a little hard, but we were not without hope. There was a deep plot among us -the only time we four conspired to gether to put off consideration of the problem, to pretend that there was no problem. Even Aunt Miriam, with a quiet hand on Letitia's knee, seemed to be waiting for it to solve-or dissolve itself. But the devil had made a good entrance. He was in fine form, I maysay. None of us helped him, but he did not need our help.

Letitia, as if with a half-thought of explaining herself, of showing the decency of her impious upbringing, had given us a wandering narrative of her youth. Mrs. Quayle had died when Letitia was ten. Since then her life had been the interesting and curious thing I have earlier hinted at. Her stress was not, as it had first been, on the exotic side of that wandering life; rather, I thought, on the important things Pro fessor Quayle had done, and the distinguished friends they had had in every part of the globe. But Letitia was not herself interested—she was incapable of "side"-and Aunt Miriam asked no eager questions. She had clasped Letitia's hand in hers, firmly, as if she would hold her bodily back from Heathenesse. Roger had Letitia's other hand, and so they sat. Then I was startled by Roger's voice, seeming to come from very far away, from the inmost recesses of the dream in which he walked:

"Do you ever wear blue, Letitia?"

It was the first question he had ever asked her. It brought back to me all the savor of that woodland miracle when we had met her, garlanded, in the forest, and Virginia had flung away her dripping mango unashamed.

"Often. Do you want me in a blue frock?"

"Yes."

"I'll put one on to-morrow. White is what I like best. But why?"

Her tone had changed, as it always changed when she spoke to Roger, and his when he spoke to her. They seemed to strike the same note; their voices mingled; it had nothing to do with the gamut they kept for the rest of the world.

"It's your widow's peak, I think. I used to play with a little girl who wore blue and had yellow hair in a widow's peak. I was very fond of her. What was her name, Aunty?"

Letitia laughed. "Yes, what was her

name?"

Mrs. Twining seemed to rouse herself from deafness. "What is it, my dear?"

"The girl I used to play with, who had yellow hair and a widow's peak, and always wore blue?"

Aunt Miriam answered, slowly, "It must have been Mabel Cheyne, Roger." "I remember Minnie Cheyne. She wasn't like that."

"Mabel was her little sister who died. You played with her in the very beginning, I am surprised that you remember her.

"I don't, very well. It must have been very far back, when I was tiny. I can't say I really remember Mabel, but I do remember the widow's peak and the blue dress. Did I go to her funeral?"

"Of course not!" Mrs. Twining's voice was sharp. "You were far too young to go to funerals. We went, of course. She was a pretty child, and, in your baby way, you were very fond of her. You soon got over it, of course."

"It is odd that I should remember. But you know I've always liked widow's peaks, uncannily, since Mabel-if that was her name. And she must have had blue dresses.'