“Miss Dodan,” I said, “I am going to ask a great favor of you.”

“Yes,” she answered, half musingly, for the tremendous fact I had related had half robbed her of her consciousness of passing things.

“I want you solemnly for the present to promise me not to reveal the strange thing I have told you.  It would hardly be believed.  No, I am sure it would be laughed at, and I would become in the eyes of everyone a foolish, impossible dreamer.  This would give me a deep sorrow.  My father’s name would be dragged into the mire of this common ridicule.  You revered my father.”

I bent more closely over her, I felt her breath upon my cheeks, her eyes seemed fixed in mine, and then I did what I had never done before, I kissed the lips of a woman and it was also the lips of the woman I loved.  There was no resistance, no withdrawal; a tremor—­was it pleasure?—­seemed to disturb her for a moment and again I kissed her.  This time with a quiet effort toward release she separated herself from me, and while I still held her hands, our walk stopped and we faced each other, just where looking westward the spires, and flocking houses of Christ Church came fully in view.

“Miss Dodan,” I began, fearful to use her first name through a reluctance that was itself the expression of the deep love I bore her, “Miss Dodan, I may for some time yet be engaged in this now imperative work.  I cannot, you know, now leave it.  It is the most marvellous thing the world has ever known.  It means so much to me, indeed to us all.  These messages are erratic—­fitful.  I have now waited for weeks for a renewal of these strange communications and there is nothing.  But in the midst of this, a distracting love for you seems to unnerve and torment me.  I beg you to wait until those days may come when I can show you all the devotion I yearn now to give you, but must not, for every moment that voice may reach me from beyond the grave, and I would be recreant to the most sacred obligations, and deep responsibilities that seem now to shape themselves before me, to our common humanity, if I forfeited an instant of inattention.  I beg you to remember all this and wait, wait, until the depthless power of my love for you can be made clear.”

I would have sunk upon my knees in the abasement and passion of my desire for her, had she not suddenly drawn me to her, flung her arms about my neck and placed her head where—­well, I am no connoisseur in love scenes—­but that day Agnes Dodan, without a syllable of sound gave her heart to me.

We passed back in silence, and when she left me the fluttering handkerchief that had so often waved back its salutation on the winding distant road was now in my hands, and its signals sent by me came to her from the plateau.  It was the simple pledge of our mutual love, a pledge that even now as I prepare these last pages of a manuscript that is a testament to the world, soothes my pain and renews the happiness of that day, forever and forever lost.