“I don’t know whether you can do it.”

“Well, what is it?  Try me.”

“Oh, Angel, I care nothing about poems.  Can’t you see how I love you? 
That’s all poetry will ever mean to me.  Just to say over and over again,
‘I love Angel.’  Just to find new and wonderful ways of saying that—­”

“Listen, Henry.  I’ve loved you from the first moment I saw you that day talking to father, and I shall love you till I die.”

“Dear, dear Angel!”

“Henry!”

Then Henry’s arms enfolded Angel with wonderful love, and her fresh young lips were on his, and the world faded away like a dream within a dream.

* * * * *

“Now perhaps you can read me your poem,” said Angel, after a while; and she noticed a curious something different in her way of speaking to him, as in his way of speaking to her,—­something blissfully homelike, as it were, as though they had sat like this for ever and ever, and were quite used to it, though at the same time it remained thrillingly new.

“It’s only a silly little childish rhyme,” said Henry; “some day I’ll write you far better.”

Then, coming close to Angel, he whispered,—­

     This is Angelica,
       Fallen from heaven,
     Fallen from heaven
       Into my arms.

     Will you go back again,
       Little Angelica,
     Back up to heaven,
       Out of my arms!

     “No,” said Angelica,
       “Here is my heaven,
     Here is my heaven,
       Here in your arms.

     “Not out of heaven,
       But into my heaven,
     Here have I fallen,
       Here in your arms.”

CHAPTER XXV

THE LAST CONTINUED, AFTER A BRIEF INTERVAL

After the long happy silence which followed Henry’s recitation of his verses, Angel at length spoke,—­

“Shall I tell you something now?” she said.  “I’m almost ashamed to, for I know you’ll laugh at me, and call me superstitious.”

“Go on, little child,” said Henry.

“You remember the day,” said Angel, in a hushed little impressive voice, “I first saw you in father’s office?”

Henry was able to remember it.

“Well, that was not the first time I had seen you.”

“Really, Angel!  Why didn’t you tell me before?  Where was it, then?  In the street, or where?”

“No, it was much stranger than that,” said Angel.  “Do you believe the future can be foretold to us?”

“Oh, it was in a dream, you funny Angel; was that it?” said Henry, whose rationalism at this period was the chief danger to his imagination.

“No, not a dream.  Something stranger than that.”

“Oh, well, I give it up.”

“It was like this,” Angel continued; “there’s a strange old gipsy woman who lives near us—­”