sought mine and softly rested within my clasp.

“It is wonderful,” she murmured, “that it has been God’s pleasure I should come to you unblemished — after all that I have lived to learn and see. But more wonderful and blessed still it is to me to find you what you are amid this restless, lawless, ruthless world of soldiery — upright and pure in heart� . It seems almost, with us, as though our mothers had truly made of us two Hidden Children, white and mysterious within the enchanted husks, which only our own hands may strip from us, and reveal ourselves unsullied as God made us, each to the other — on our wedding morn.”

I lifted her little hand and laid my lips to it, touching the ring. Then she bent timidly and kissed the rough gold