“Dear,” she said, hesitating a little, “I am perfectly unconscious of any guilt in loving you.  I am glad I love you.  I wish to be part of you before I die.  I wish it more than anything in the world!  How can an unselfish girl who loves you harm you or herself or the world if she gives herself to you—­without asking benefit of clergy and the bureau of licenses?”

Standing before the fire, her head resting against his shoulder, they watched the fading embers for a while in silence.  Then, irresistibly drawn by the same impulse, they turned toward one another, trembling: 

“I’ll marry you that way—­if it’s the only way,” he said.

“It is the—­only way.”

She laid a soft hand in his; he bent and kissed it, then touched her mouth with his lips.

“Do you give yourself to me, Valerie?”

“Yes.”

“From this moment?” he whispered.

Her face paled.  She stood resting her cheek on his shoulder, eyes distrait thinking.  Then, in a voice so low and tremulous he scarce could understand: 

“Yes, now,” she said, “I—­give—­myself.”

He drew her closer:  she relaxed in his embrace; her face, white as a flower, upturned to his, her dark eyes looking blindly into his.

There was no sound save the feathery rush of snow against the panes—­the fall of an ember amid whitening ashes—­a sigh—­silence.

Twice logs fell from the andirons, showering the chimney with sparks; presently a little flame broke out amid the debris, lighting up the studio with a fitful radiance; and the single shadow cast by them wavered high on wall and ceiling.

His arms were around her; his lips rested on her face where it lay against his shoulder.  The ruddy resurgence of firelight stole under the lashes on her cheeks, and her eyes slowly unclosed.

Standing there gathered close in his embrace, she turned her head and watched the flame growing brighter among the cinders.  Thought, which had ceased when her lips met his in the first quick throb of passion, stirred vaguely, and awoke.  And, far within her, somewhere in confused obscurity, her half-stunned senses began groping again toward reason.

“Louis!”

“Dearest one!”

“I ought to go.  Will you take me home?  It is morning—­do you realise it?”

She lifted her head, cleared her eyes with one slender wrist, pushing back the disordered hair.  Then gently disengaging herself from his arms, and still busy with her tumbled hair, she looked up at the dial of the ancient clock which glimmered red in the firelight.

“Morning—­and a strange new year,” she said aloud, to herself.  She moved nearer to the clock, watching the stiff, jerking revolution of the second hand around its lesser dial.

Hearing him come forward behind her, she dropped her head back against him without turning.

“Do you see what Time is doing to us?—­Time, the incurable, killing us by seconds, Louis—­eating steadily into the New Year, devouring it hour by hour—­the hours that we thought belonged to us.”  She added, musingly:  “I wonder how many hours of the future remain for us.”