They stopped to part among the Scotch firs.

`Then my life will be filled with hope, Maggie - and I shall be happier than other men, in spite of all? We do belong to each other - for always - whether we are apart or together?'

`Yes, Philip: I should like never to part: I should like to make your life very happy.'

`I am waiting for something else - I wonder whether it will come.'

Maggie smiled, with glistening tears, and then stopped her tall head to kiss the low pale face that was full of pleading, timid love - like a woman's.

She had a moment of real happiness than - a moment of belief that if there were sacrifice in this love - it was all the richer and more satisfying.

She turned away and hurried home, feeling that in the hour since she had trodden this road before, a new era had begun for her. The tissue of vague dreams must now get narrower and narrower, and all the threads of thought and emotion be gradually absorbed in the woof of her actual daily life.