and kiss, and gentle touch, but in things more enduring, which to endure must be sound and whole and not cankered to the core by a living lie.  Then came the old reckless reasoning again:  Am I not I?  Is he not he?  Do I not love him with my whole strength?  Does he not love this very self of mine, here as it is, my head upon his shoulder, my hand within his hand?  And if he once loved another, have I not her place, to have and hold, that I may be loved in her stead?  Go, said the doubt, growing black and strong; go, for you are nothing to him but a figure in his dream, disguised in the lines of one he really loved and loves; go quickly, before it is too late, before that real Beatrice comes and wakes him and drives you out of the kingdom you usurp.

But she knew it was only a doubt, and had it been the truth, and had Beatrice’s foot been on the threshold, she would not have been driven away by fear.  But the fight had begun.

“Speak to me, dear,” she said.  “I must hear your voice—­it makes me know that it is all real.”

“How the minutes fly!” he exclaimed, smoothing her hair with his hand.  “It seems to me that I was but just speaking when you spoke.”

“It seems so long—­” She checked herself, wondering whether an hour had passed or but a second.

Though love be swifter than the fleeting hours, doubt can outrun a lifetime in one beating of the heart.

“Then how divinely long it all may seem,” he answered.  “But can we not begin to think, and to make plans for to-morrow, and the next day, and for the years before us?  That will make more time for us, for with the present we shall have the future, too.  No—­that is foolish again.  And yet it is so hard to say which I would have.  Shall the moment linger because it is so sweet?  Or shall it be gone quickly, because the next is to be sweeter still?  Love, where is your father?”

Unorna started.  The question was suggested, perhaps, by his inclination to speak of what was to be done, but it fell suddenly upon her ears, as a peal of thunder when the sky has no clouds.  Must she lie now, or break the spell?  One word, at least, she could yet speak with truth.

“Dead.”

“Dead!” the Wanderer repeated, thoughtfully and with a faint surprise.  “Is it long ago, beloved?” he asked presently, in a subdued tone as though fearing to wake some painful memory.

“Yes,” she answered.  The great doubt was taking her heart in its strong hands now and tearing it, and twisting it.

“And whose house is this in which I have found you, darling?  Was it his?”

“It is mine,” Unorna said.

How long would he ask questions to which she could find true answers?  What question would come next?  There were so many he might ask and few to which she could reply so truthfully even in that narrow sense of truth which found its only meaning in a whim of chance.  But for a moment he asked nothing more.