The sunlight fell upon his lifted head, and on his dress, that was as rich as any bridegroom’s, and on a sword-knot of silver gauze.  “Look you thus in Heaven, O my King?” she breathed.

Sir Mortimer approached her very slowly, for he saw that her senses strayed.  As he came nearer she shrank against the wall of bloom.  “Dear heart,” he said, “I am a living man, and before all the world I now may wear thy silver sleave.”  But the rose you gave me once before hath withered into dust.  I could not hold it back.  “Break for me another rose—­Dione!”

She put out her hand and obeyed.  Into her eyes had come a crescent splendor, upon her lips the dawn of an ineffable smile; but yet troubled, yet without full understanding, she, trembling, held out the flower at arm’s length.  But when Ferne’s hand closed upon hers, when she felt herself drawn into his arms and his kiss upon her lips, his whisper in her ears, she awoke, and thought not less of Heaven, but only that Heaven had come to earth.

THE END