Soon Kane saw the little cloaked and hooded figure approaching through the private woodland path that led from the Denecroft domain. Slowly she came towards him, her veil down, nor would he seem to presume or prejudge her attitude by advancing to meet her.
Bitter sorrow and vain regret had set their seal upon his finely chiselled features, while affection unutterable and unspeakable gleamed in his eyes. With an inarticulate cry she tottered into his arms; shaking with sobs, her head sunk on his breast.
With self-accusing words he strove to soothe her, putting back the rebellious tendrils of hair that fringed her temples. By degrees he calmed her agitation, and poured balm into her aching heart. He told her anew of his undying love, and that it was because of this ennobling passion he had schooled himself to the confession which had raised up a well-nigh impassable barrier between them.
"If I had not loved you so well, dearest," he concluded, "I could not have brought myself to face it."
"And now I love you all the better," she exclaimed, smiling upon him proudly through her tears. "Your noble heart was revealed to me then!"
"You must forget me, Stella," he urged, trying to put her away from him.
"Never!" she asserted, nestling the closer to his side.
"But I leave England at once," he insisted.
"Then you must take me with you," she cried, "for I cannot live without you!"
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RETROSPECT
THE winds that ring, these mellow days,
What old, half-silenced chords they stir!
And when I dream, the dream betrays,
Not what will be, but things that were.
As migrant birds, that flit afar
When autumn lays their coverts bare,—
Ingathering wide from wold and scar.
They wing their flight—they know not where,
Nor how their aery course is laid;
Where others fared in æons dead.
They follow onward, unafraid,
Nor guess what guide those wanderings led;
For where the devious pathway veered
Once towered peaks above the lea,
And silvery firths that forward steered
Lie now beneath the trackless sea.
Yet still, by some vague impulse bent,
They thrid the maze; and as they fly,
The shore of some lost continent
Is etched upon the star-lit sky.
Even so to Thee, who wert the goal
Of all I was in days of yore,
Across the whelming tides that roll
Of time and chance and change, once more
My eager longings blindly turn
O'er paths so clear in buried years;
Towards Thee again my fancies yearn.
And lo! my vanished self appears.
