My hand has never touched your hand, I have not seen your face,  
No sound of any spoken word has passed between us two—
 
Yet night by night I come to you in some unearthly place,
 
And all my dreams of day and night are dreams of love and you.
 
The moon has never shone on us together in our sleep,
 
The sun has never seen us kiss beneath the arch of day,
 
Your eyes have never looked in mine—your soul has looked so deep,
 
That all the veils of sense are and done away.
 
My lids are sealed with more than sleep, but I am lapped in light,
 
Your soul draws near, and yet more near, till both our souls are one,
 
In that strange place of our content is neither day nor night,
 
No end and no beginning, whilst the timeless æons run.
 
David came home after his month’s holiday as hard and healthy as a man may be. Elizabeth was well content. She and David were friends. He liked her company, he ate and slept, he was well, and he laughed sometimes as the old David had laughed.
 
 
“Don’t you think your master looks well, Mrs. Havergill?” she said quite .
 
Mrs. Havergill sighed.
 
“He do look well,” she admitted; “but there, ma’am, there’s no saying—it isn’t looks as we can go by. In my own family now, there was my sister Sarah. She was a fine, fresh-looking woman. Old Dr. Jones he met her out walking, as it might be on the Thursday.
 
“‘Well, Miss Sarah, you do look well,’ he says—and there, ’tweren’t but the following Tuesday as she was took. ‘Who’d ha’ thought it,’ he says. ‘In the midst of life we are in death,’ and that’s a true word. And my brother ’Enry now, ’e never look so well in all ’is life as when he was laying in ’is .”
 
Elizabeth could afford to laugh.
 
“Oh, Mrs. Havergill, do be cheerful,” she ; “it would be so much better for you.”
 
Mrs. Havergill looked injured.
 
“I don’t see as we’re sent into this world to be cheerful,” she said, with the air of one who reproves unchristian .
 
“Oh, but we are—we really are,” said Elizabeth.
 
Mrs. Havergill shook her head.
 
“Let them be cheerful as has no troubles,” she remarked. “I’ve ’ad mine, and a-plenty,” and she went out of the room, sighing.
 
Mary ran in to see her sister quite early on the morning after their return.
 
“Well, Liz—no, let me look at you—I’ll kiss you in a minute. Are you happy—you wrote dreadful guide-book letters, that I tore up and put in the fire.”
 
“Oh, Molly.”
 
“Yes, they were—exactly like Baedeker, only worse. All about mountains and flowers and the nice air, and ‘David is quite well again.’ As if anyone wanted to hear about mountains and flowers from a person on her . Are you happy, Liz?”
 
“Don’t I look happy?” said Elizabeth laughing.
 
“Yes, you do.” Mary looked at her considering. “You do. Is it all right, Liz, really all right?”
 
“Yes, it’s really all right, Molly,” said Elizabeth, and then she began to talk of other things.
 
Mary kissed her very affectionately when she went away, but at the door she turned, frowning.
 
“I expect you wrote reams to Agneta,” she said, and then shut the door quickly before Elizabeth had time to answer.
 
David was out when Mary came, and it so happened that for two or three days they did not meet. He had come to the meeting. His passion for Mary was dead. He was afraid lest her presence, her voice, should raise the dead and bring it again in its garment of and pain. Then on Sunday he came in to find Mary sitting there with Elizabeth in the . She jumped up as he came in, and held out her hand.
 
“Well, David, you are a nice brother—never to have come and seen me. Busy? Yes, of course you’ve been busy, but you might have squeezed in a visit to me, amongst all the visits to sick old ladies and naughty little boys. Oh, do you know, Katie Ellerton has gone away? She took Ronnie to Brighton for a change, and then wrote and said she wasn’t coming back. I believe she is going to live with a brother who is a down there. And she’s selling her furniture, so if you want extra things you might get them cheap.”
 
“That’s Elizabeth’s department,” said David, laughing.
 
“Well, this is for you both. When will you come to dinner? On Tuesday? Yes, do. Talk about being busy. Edward’s busy, if you like. I never see him, and he’s quite worried. Liz, you remember Webster? Well, you know he’s on the West Coast, and he’s sent Edward a whole case of things—frightfully exciting , two centipedes he’s wanted for ever so long, and a spider that Jack says is new. And Edward has never even had time to open the case. That shows you! It’s accounts, I believe. Edward does hate accounts.”
 
When she had gone David sat silent for a long time. It was the old Mary, and prettier than ever. He had never seen her looking prettier, but his feeling for her was gone. He could look at her quite dispassionately, and wonder over the old unreasoning thrill. And what a chatterbox she was. Thank Heaven, she had had the sense to marry Edward, who was really not such a bad sort. Poor Edward. He laughed aloud suddenly, and Elizabeth looked up and asked:
 
“What is it?”
 
“Edward and the case he can’t open, and the centipedes he can’t play with,” he said, still laughing. “Poor old Edward! What it is to have a conscience. I wonder he doesn’t have a midnight orgy with the ............