Theirs was that dream of a threefold union, in which, so to say, jealousy shall be so taken into the confidence of, so held to the heart of, love, that it shall transform itself into love too; and, from being the lonely tragic third, become, as the other two, one of an indivisible trinity.  Such unions of natures of especial grace have been born under like conditions of fated intercourse, and they have been unions of a strange beauty, the more blest by the sense of a conquest over love’s one unworthiness, its egoism.  As the egoisme a deux is finer than an egoism of one, so this egoisme a trois, if you will, is again finer by its additional inclusiveness.

Perhaps it had proved wiser in the end to yield to this temptation too.  But the tragic risk was one to dismay experiment.  The strength of such a union is literally the strength of its weakest link.  Jenny loved both Isabel and Theophil, and both Isabel and Theophil loved Jenny; and in the love of the two girls, there was an element of affection that was more impassioned than friendship.  Jenny indeed loved Isabel so much that it might well have proved that her love, with nothing but gladness, could have added its volume to Theophil’s, and the three loves, meeting in one river of love, flowed on together to the eternal sea.

But the tragic risk!  The alternative was—­heart-break, death.  They had vowed to save Jenny from the lightning.  Perhaps it would not destroy, but only transfigure, after all,—­yet the test was lightning; and for whom that we love dare we venture such an ordeal, though it were to win them Paradise?

No!  Jenny must never know.  And yet, perhaps, if Jenny had been told...  Well, the greatest love for another cannot guard all the gates of chance.  And, alas! these two, loyal as they were, for one unguarded moment were to leave open a gate of their Paradise,—­when we withdraw into Paradise we should see that all the gates are closed,—­and Jenny, by a like chance, was to take into her soul one blinding glimpse of them there.

It was the evening of the last recital, and Theophil and Isabel had gone down, to “Zion” a few minutes before the hour arranged, Jenny, who for some trivial reason was detained, to meet them at the hall.  An audience was already gathered there; but this Theophil and Isabel avoided, entering the building by the minister’s private entrance into his vestry, which communicated by a dark staircase with the chapel and the lecture-hall where the recital was to be given.  There was a light in the vestry, but no one was there, though they might have expected Mr. Moggridge.  For a moment, to their eternal sorrow, they forgot all but that they were once more alone and together; and as they sought each other’s arms, standing in the centre of that grim little room, a weak anguish came over Theophil, and he exclaimed,—­

“Oh, Isabel, to think that I have lost you! lost you!”