“I don’t believe it, Alice.  I can’t recollect anything before I knew you.”

“Well, now, as time is so confused, we must try to live for eternity.  We must try to help each other to be good.  Oh, when I think what a happy girl I am, I feel that I should be the most ungrateful person under the sun not to be good.  Let’s try to make our lives perfect—­perfect!  They can be.  And we mustn’t live for each other alone.  We must try to do good as well as be good.  We must be kind and forbearing with every one.”

He answered, with tender seriousness, “My life’s in your hands, Alice.  It shall be whatever you wish.”

They were both silent in their deep belief of this.  When they spoke again, she began gaily:  “I shall never get over the wonder of it.  How strange that we should meet at the Museum!” They had both said this already, but that did not matter; they had said nearly everything two or three times.  “How did you happen to be there?” she asked, and the question was so novel that she added, “I haven’t asked you before.”

He stopped, with a look of dismay that broke up in a hopeless laugh.  “Why, I went there to meet some people—­some ladies.  And when I saw you I forgot all about them.”

Alice laughed to; this was a part of their joy, their triumph.

“Who are they?” she asked indifferently, and only to heighten the absurdity by realising the persons.

“You don’t know them,” he said.  “Mrs. Frobisher and her sister, of Portland.  I promised to meet them there and go out to Cambridge with them.”

“What will they think?” asked Alice.  “It’s too amusing.”

“They’ll think I didn’t come,” said Mavering, with the easy conscience of youth and love; and again they laughed at the ridiculous position together.  “I remember now I was to be at the door, and they were to take me up in their carriage.  I wonder how long they waited?  You put everything else out of my head.”

“Do you think I’ll keep it out?” she asked archly.

“Oh yes; there is nothing else but you now.”

The eyes that she dropped, after a glance at him, glistened with tears.

A lump came into his throat.  “Do you suppose,” he asked huskily, “that we can ever misunderstand each other again?”

“Never.  I see everything clearly now.  We shall trust each other implicitly, and at the least thing that isn’t clear we can speak.  Promise me that you’ll speak.”

“I will, Alice.  But after this all will be clear.  We shall deal with each other as we do with ourselves.”

“Yes; that will be the way.”

“And we mustn’t wait for question from each other.  We shall know—­we shall feel—­when there’s any misgiving, and then the one that’s caused it will speak.”

“Yes,” she sighed emphatically.  “How perfectly you say it?  But that’s because you feel it, because you are good.”

They walked on, treading the air in a transport of fondness for each other.  Suddenly he stopped.