“I may see you again, then,” she said, presently, with a deep tone of content.

He stood back from her and looked towards the horizon. There was a radiance upon his face as though light fell on him out of heaven.

“Yes, if—”

“Well?”

“We vow here together.”

She waited.

“That I never touch you, never so much as touch your hand. That our flesh is severed absolutely; that only our spirits meet.”

“I will swear that,” she said, slowly.

So, under the sunlit sky and in the breath of the breeze, they swore both of them together a solemn oath, an oath to heaven.

XVIII