resurrection, enforcing belief in the immortality of the soul, as he gazed on this lovely face in which reason, hope, even gaiety, were so visibly born anew.

"Never mind about that which you have lost," he said. "Let it be for the present. We will arrive at it in time sure enough—leave all that to me. You want these drawers opened, their locks picked?—Well, that shall be done all in good time. But whatever treasures we find there will be but a trifle, it strikes me, compared with that which we have already found to-night. For I have found you—found you once more—and you, thank God, have found yourself."

Again his companion stretched, and passed her hands across her eyes, while her lips parted in a soundless sigh. Silence held her yet, but that appeared to make singularly little difference in their intercourse. For he perceived that she understood, that she sympathised, that she too was penetrated with quick, intimate joy, and an exquisite and innocent good-fellowship, as plainly as though a very torrent of eloquent explanation and asseveration had issued from her mouth. Indeed, this wordlessness had for him an extraordinary charm. Far from a power being lacking, it was to him as though a new power had been granted, and that the most subtle and convincing to the heart.

Laurence stood tall, upright, in the full pride of his young manhood, of his virile energy and strength, before this slender fairy-lady, with her softly gleaming jewels, her dainty frills and laces, her clinging rose-red, old-world, silken gown, and held out his hands to her.

"Come," he said, "the night is fair and windless and full of stars. Shall we go out into it and read the great poem of the sky and the woodland while all men sleep, you and I—good comrades, old friends, though as most mortals count meeting, we have met each other, it would seem, but twice?—You have known sad things. Well, forget them. You have searched vainly for lost things. Well, forget them too. The finest house at best remains somewhat of a prison, and this room is pervaded by melancholy memories. Leave it. Let us give the past, give convention, give reason even, the slip for once—and go."

For a minute or more she hesitated, looking at Laurence profoundly, as though trying to read his inmost thought. Then she laid her hand in his. It had neither weight nor substance, but touched his palm as a light summer wind might have touched his cheek, or a butterfly's wings might have fluttered, with a just perceptible pulsation, within the hollow of his hands.

And so 

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