“Alba,” he whispered, clasping her in his arms and gathering her to his breast—“Alba, I love you. Will you come to me and be my wife?”
Was she awake, with the solid earth under her feet, or were those whispered words the music that our fancy makes in dreams? But the music did not die away, nor did the clasping arm melt from her, as do the embraces of those loved ones who visit us in sleep.
“You love me!” she said, looking up into his face with her large, warm glance, pure and trusting as a child’s—“you love me!” And the sunbeams went on singing it in shadow music on the grass, and the cuckoo called it through the woods, and the trees in their murmurous song repeated it, and the clouds, as they sailed over the zenith, traced it in silver lines upon the sky—“You love me!”
TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.
MAGDALEN AT THE TOMB.
Deep sombre clouds roll up to shroud the night,
For in the silence of a guarded tomb
Rests the rich promise of a Virgin’s womb;
And hearts that hoped are shrunk as buds by blight,
Till, like a soul which gains from Heaven delight,