“I burned it.”

“I have every letter you ever wrote me.  They are in my desk upstairs.  The desk is not locked.”

“Had you not better destroy them?”

“Why?”

“As you wish,” he said, looking at the ground.

“One keeps the letters of the dead,” she said; “your youth and mine”—­she made a little gesture downward as though smoothing a grave—­daintily.

They were very unwise, sitting there in the sunshine side by side, tremendously impressed with the catastrophe of life and with each other—­still young enough to be in earnest, to take life and each other with that awesome finality which is the dread privilege of youth.

She spoke with conviction of the mockery of life, of wisdom and its sadness; he looked upon the world in all the serious disillusion of youth, and saw it strewn with the fragments of their wrecked happiness.

They were very emotional, very unhappy, very, very much in love; but the truly pathetic part of it all lay in her innocent conviction that a marriage witnessed by the world was a sanctuary within the circle of which neither she nor he had any reason to fear each other or themselves.

The thing was done; hope slain.  They, the mourners, might now meet in safety to talk together over the dead—­suffer together among the graves of common memories, sadly tracing, reverently marking with epitaphs appropriate the tombs which held the dead days of their youth.

Youth believes; Age is the sceptic.  So they did not know that, as nature abhors a vacuum, youth cannot long tolerate the vacuity of grief.  Rose vines, cut to the roots, climb the higher.  No checking ever killed a passion.  Just now her inexperience was driving her into platitudes.

“Dear Garry,” she said gently, “it is such happiness to talk to you like this; to know that you understand.”

There is a regulation forbidding prisoners to converse upon the subject of their misdemeanours, but neither he nor she seemed to be aware of it.

Moreover, she was truly convinced that no nun in cloister was as hopelessly certain of safety from world and flesh and devil as was her heart and its meditations, under the aegis of admitted wedlock.

She looked down at the ring she wore, and a faint shiver passed over her.

“You are going to Mrs. Ascott?”

“Yes, to make her a Trianon and a smirking little park.  I can’t quarrel with my bread and butter, but I wish people would let these woods alone.”

She sat very still and thoughtful, hands clasped on her knee.

“So you are going to Mrs. Ascott,” she repeated.  And, still thoughtful:  “I am so fond of Alida Ascott....  She is very pretty, isn’t she?”

“Very,” he said absently.

“Don’t you think so?”—­warmly.

“I never met her but once.”

She was considering him, the knuckle of one forefinger resting against her chin in an almost childish attitude of thoughtful perplexity.