the "President of the Heaven-and-Hell Amalgamation Company." Whether you deserve it or not, I propose to continue writing about her to you.

Doubtless you would like me to retrace my steps can I honestly do so? Let me try to reproduce for you the scene that took place between us yesterday, then you can answer the question for yourself.

We had ridden some miles from the house and were deep in the cathedral-like woods; I suggested we should dismount and tie our horses to a tree, and take a stroll, which we did.

"How I love flowers," she was saying. "I know they are endowed with life and have a language of their own. Don't you remember how Tennyson in 'Maud' makes them talk, and the lily whispers I wait, I wait.' By the bye, did you ever read a

little story about some flowers in a dying girl's room nursing her back to life? They took turns in watching, wishing, and praying. One would wake when the other folded its leaves and slept. She is one of us,' they cried. 'She must be saved,' and so these little flowers gave up their lives for hers."

"It's a very pretty idea," I said, "but I should hate to depend upon a flower to give me my medicine regularly, to shake my pillows, or run for the doctor. If I am ill, please see that I have a trained nurse; she may be as pretty as the fairest flower if you like; but I should prefer to trust my worthless life to her, than to a well-wishing lily of the valley."

At first, her eyelids drooped with disappointment; then, raising them, she looked up in my face, saying:

"For shame! Mr. Dayton, for shame! Have you no poetic feeling?"

"Not where illness is concerned," I answered. "An illness from which you recover is simply a dip into the Valley of Death. You come out on top of the far mountain, once, twice, perhaps; then you take another dip and you remain in the valley. There is nothing poetical about death. It is horribly practical. To me it is the end."

"And to me," she whispered, "the beginning."

"But come," I continued, "this conversation is out of place on such a morning. Let's talk of love and life." Then in a lower voice, I added: Shall we talk of

love?"

"Yes," she murmured, "what is it?"

The sudden frankness of this question,

and its unexpectedness struck me as humourous and changed my mood like a flash.

"Love," I laughingly replied, " is a tidal wave of feeling which drowns the intelligence of a man and woman."

She looked puzzled for a moment, and then asked:

"Is that all you believe it to be?"

"No, not all. I believe a man's capacity to love a good woman is generally the only good thing about him. I believe a man's love for a woman takes its colouring from the woman he loves and that a man's love you would be a great white shaft of dazzling light."

for

Her eyes became sapphire seas and surely the blood in her veins ran warmer. But before she spoke again, her old tranquillity came back, and she asked:

(( Do you believe to love is a duty?'

Again I felt a shock; this time I felt more irritated than amused.

So I answered: "Love is the antithesis of duty; it is a wild caprice; the very essence of its being is independence of will. Duty is the reverse. Any love which has a large percentage of duty in it has a large percentage of dead matter that checks its growth. I fear that God made you to be loved rather than to love. Our earthly affections are made of sterner stuff than you are capable of."

"I don't know whether you are right or wrong," she said, "but I do know that there are moments when my whole character seems waiting to change, in answer to a few words spoken by some one; I know not by whom."

"Then, I shall be your Knight of the Holy Grail and search the wide world over