At this she checked her sobs, and looked up at him in vague amazement.

“You would never have spoken?”

“Never!”

“You would have let me live on here, quite close to you, seeing you every day, perhaps, without a word of the love in your heart?”

He kissed her, half-smiling.

“I think I should!”

“Then”—­said Maryllia, with grave sweetness—­“I know that God does mean everything for the best—­and I thank Him for having made me a cripple!  Because if my trouble has warmed your heart,—­your cold, cold heart, John!”—­and she smiled at him through her tears—­“and has made you say you love me, then it is the most blessed and beautiful trouble I could possibly have, and has brought me the greatest happiness of my life!  I am glad of it and proud of it,—­I glory in it!  For I would rather know that you love me than be the straightest, brightest, loveliest woman in the world!  I would rather be here in your arms—­so—­” and she nestled close against him—­“than have all the riches that were ever counted!—­and—­listen, John!” Here, with her clinging, caressing arms, she drew his head down close to her breast—­“Even if I have to die and leave you soon, I shall know that all is right with my soul!—­yes, dear, dear John!—­ because you will have taken away all its faults and made it beautiful with your love!—­and God will love it for love’s sake, almost as much as He must love you for your own, John!”

There was only one way—­there never has been more than one way—­to answer such tender words, and John took that way by silencing the sweet lips that spoke them with a kiss in which the pent-up passion of his soul was concentrated.  The shadows of the winter gloaming deepened;—­the firelight died down to a mass of rosy embers;-and when Cicely softly opened the door an hour later, the room was almost dark.  But the scent of violets was in the air—­she heard soft whisperings, and saw that two human beings at least, out of all a seeking world, had found the secret of happiness.  And she stole away unseen, smiling, yet with glad tears in her eyes, and a little unuttered song in her heart—­

   “If to love is the best of all things known,
    We have gain’d the best in the world, mine own! 
     We have touch’d the summit of love—­and live
     God Himself has no more to give!”

XXXII

The prime of youth is said to be the only time of life when lovers are supposed by poets and romancists to walk ‘on air,’ so as John Walden was long past the age when men are called young, it is difficult to determine the kind of buoyant element on which he trod when he left the Manor that evening.  Youth!—­what were its vague inchoate emotions, its trembling hesitations, its more or less selfish jealousies, doubts and desires, compared to the strong, glowing and tender passion which filled the heart of this man, so long a solitary in the world, who now