“I am no Catholic, but I will pray for you, and you shall not be lost. The mother in heaven and the wife on earth will keep you safe,” whispered Gladys, in her fervent voice, feeling and answering with a woman’s quickness the half-expressed desire of a nature conscious of its weakness, yet unskilled in asking help for its greatest need.
Silently the two young lovers put on their amulets, and, hand in hand, went back along the winding path, till they reached the great eglantine that threw its green arches across the outlet from the wood. All beyond was radiantly bright and blooming; and as Canaris, passing first to hold back the thorny boughs, stood an instant, bathed in the splendor of the early sunshine, Gladys exclaimed, her face full of the tender idolatry of a loving woman,—
“O Felix, you are so good, so great, so beautiful, if it were not wicked, I should worship you!”
“God forbid! Do not love me too much, Gladys: I do not deserve it.”
“How can I help it, when I feel very like the girl who lost her heart to the Apollo?” she answered, feeling that she never could love too much.
“And broke her heart, you remember, because her god was only a stone.”
“Mine is not, and he will answer when I call.”
“If he does not, he will be harder and colder than the marble!”
When Canaris, some hours later, told Helwyze, he looked well pleased, thinking, “Jealousy is a helpful ally. I do not regret calling in its aid, though it has cost Olivia her pearls.” Aloud he said, with a gracious air, which did not entirely conceal some secret anxiety,—
“Then you have made a clean breast of it, and she forgives all peccadilloes?”