I fold my arms about his neck close and warm: it is such a new delight to me to know that he is all my own. If he had been given back to me from the dead, I could not look at him with greater wonder and thankfulness. And yet it is altogether unaccountable, but though Paul has been with me all this time he has not kissed me once; no, nor seemed to think of such a thing! It never happened so before.
"Hark at the bells!" I say, as they ring out, now loud, now clear, across the fields. "I wonder will they ring as sweetly as that when you and I are wed, Paul? And I actually dreamt that you were married to somebody else, dear. Was ever anything more foolish and senseless?"
He lifts his head, suddenly rises, and stands before me. The minute bell has almost done ringing as he begins to speak; it ceases and with the last stroke every joy and good and hope the world contains has died out to me for ever and ever . . . . and this is my white, merry Christmas morning!
Not a sound breaks the silence as we look in each other's deathly faces; then his mouth opens, and a terrible curse breaks from his lips and wanders out over the desolate stirless land; and my heart begins to move again, and sluggish life to creep into my body. His words do not shock me—do not even seem strange to me. I listen to them as idly as I used to hearken to the frozen brook yonder when it ran its summer course between the green banks.
"And why did you come back?" I ask, and my voice is much the same as usual, only maybe a little slower. Why are you not with your wife?"
"My wife!" The words leave his lips as though he cast a foul stain of leprosy from him. "Why did you let me go without a warning?" he cries, with clenched hands. "Did you know all the time that we had such a bitter enemy? Did you know that for years I have been spied on, dogged, followed; and that here, in
