Very quietly the warm weeks of July slipped away. Valentine had long since recovered, but had not yet been seen beyond the precincts of the cottage.

On a calm Sunday afternoon Vivienne left Mrs. Colonibel’s room and went to wander about under the pines. Absently straying nearer the cottage than she was in the habit of doing, for she knew that Valentine did not wish to see her, she suddenly came upon him lying on his back on a grassy knoll, his hands crossed under his head, his face turned up to the sky, and in “a voice as sweet as the note of the charmed lute” caroling cheerfully the old song:

With a pained face the girl stood for a minute looking at him, then softly attempted to withdraw, but his ear, sharpened to unnatural quickness, caught the sound of her step, light as it was.

“Who is that?” he asked. “Joe, is it you?”

“No, it is I,” said Vivienne, advancing after an instant of hesitation.

“Oh!” and he listlessly dropped his head on the grass.

“May I come and talk to you?” she asked. “I have longed to see you.”

“Yes, oh yes,” and he raised himself to a sitting posture. “I would get up and find you a seat if I could.”

“I can sit on this rug, thank you,” said Vivienne a little unsteadily.

She placed herself a short distance from him and looked at the sombre trees, the blue sky, the bluer Arm, where a tiny boat was crossing to the other side—anywhere but at the handsome, weary face, with its disfiguring spectacles.

“Have you on a white dress?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“And you have your favorite perfume about you,” he said with a half-smile; “or are they real roses?”

“Real ones,” and she put between his fingers a cluster of long, white, rose-shaded Rubens buds.

“You are crying,” he said abruptly.

“Only a little,” she murmured, trying to compose herself. This she could not do; for once she lost all self-control and burying her face in her hands she wept bitterly.

The young man’s face softened as he listened to her. “Stanton has told me that you were breaking your heart about me. It is pitiful, isn’t it? Twenty-five and at the end of everything. But don’t worry; I’ve given that up. At first I raved and beat my head till it was sore against the bars of my bed, but it didn’t do any good. I’ve got to submit,” and with a painful smile he again stretched himself out on the grass.

“This is unpardonable in me,” said Vivienne, resolutely wiping her eyes. “I am ashamed of myself. I shall not offend again. You can see a little, Valentine, can you not?”

“Not a glimmer.”

Vivienne’s lip trembled, but she pressed it with her teeth and went on: “When are you coming up to the house? It is forlorn without you.”

“Never,” he said gloomily. “What do you want of me there?”

“If I can hear your exquisite voice singing words of encouragement I think that I can bear any burden,” said the girl wistfully.

“Oh, you wish me to keep you in good humor.”

“It would be an important mission. I have learned the accompaniments of all your songs.”

“Have you?” and his face grew bright. “I will come up—perhaps this evening. Were you planning to go to church?”

“Yes; but I would rather stay at home with you.”

“Even if Stanton goes?”

“Yes.”

He laughed shortly, and with none of the fierce jealousy of former days said: “We shall be good friends, you and I, when I settle down to this darkness.”

“May I read to you sometime?” asked Vivienne.

“How clever you are,” he said. “You have found out that I hate to have any one do anything for me and you want to wheedle me into getting accustomed to it. No, my dear belle-soeur, you shall not read your Bible and psalm books to me.”

Vivienne smiled hopefully. “Sometime you will allow me to do so, and while we wait for that time there are other books. Now I must return to the house. Au revoir, my brother; God will make you happier.”

“There is no God!” he exclaimed.

She looked down at his mocking face and then up at the serene vault of the sky above them. “No God! Valentine; no Creator of the world! I had hoped that by this time you would think differently.”

“Prove to me that there is one,” he said excitedly, “and I will believe you.”

She stooped and laid a finger on his sightless eyes.

He understood her. “Do you think that your imaginary God has afflicted me willfully?”

“Not willfully, but lovingly.”

“This is infuriating,” he exclaimed, his face flushing violently. “A loving God who casts a created thing into a dark pit!”

“Oh no, no,” said Vivienne sadly; “the creature does that. We cast ourselves into dark pits because we will not see the light of the world shining above us.”

“But we are created with evil propensities that take us pitward, according to you.”

“Evil propensities that we must not follow, for God will also give us strength to overcome them if we ask him.”

“This is Stargarde’s doctrine,” he said sullenly. “I want none of it. You Christians are most illogical people. Primitive traditions, handed down through eighteen centuries and starting among ignorant, unlettered peasants and fishermen, are your rule of life. You can’t prove a single one of your statements to be true.”

“What is proof?” asked Vivienne.

“Proof? Why it is enough evidence about a thing to convince one and produce belief.”

“And you think that Christians do not have that?”

“Decidedly not.”

“I think that you are mistaken. Have you read the Bible through?”

“No.”

“I believe that is often the case with people who criticise it,” she said thoughtfully. “But you are acquainted with portions of it. Can you read without tears the Sermon on the Mount and the account of the crucifixion?”

He made no reply to her, and she continued, “If you take our Bible away, what will you give us to keep our feet from stumbling in the darkness of this world?”

“Let us rely on ourselves,” he said proudly. “Man needs no surer guide than his own internal conviction of right and wrong. That is better than trusting to a fable.”

“I do not think that we get on well when we take charge of ourselves,” she said gently.

“I don’t set myself up for a pattern,” he said hastily; “I’ve been bad—you don’t know how bad I’ve been.”

“Poor Valentine,” she murmured.

“You need not pity me. I was perfectly happy. You goody-goody people talk a lot about sinners’ consciences troubling them. They don’t. One isn’t afraid of anything but being found out.”

“If a conscience sleeps, how can it guide?”

“Well, I intended to let mine wake up some day, then I would sober myself and lead a steady life. Don’t go yet. Tell me more about your beliefs.”

She cast a pitying glance at his restless, unhappy face, and again sat down beside him. “I cannot argue learnedly with you, Valentine. I can only say that I believe in God and in his Son our Saviour, who will forgive our sins if we ask him, and that I believe in the Bible as his revealed word, and that I know I shall go to him when I die. It is a very comfortable belief.”

“Comfortable! yes, for you; not so comfortable for the poor fellows whom you damn.”

“‘God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved,’” repeated Vivienne.

“An attractive myth,” he said lightly; “and you Christians won’t expose it.”

“Why should one doubt a thing that one is sure of?” asked the girl with a puzzled face. “Here is proof enough for me: our glorious faith has been the light of the world; apostles, prophets, and martyrs have died triumphantly for it; Christians are the salt of the earth, and if you had your way and cast every Bible into the sea, our land would become a dreary wilderness of shame and confusion.”

“Fanaticism!” said Valentine; “the Mohammedans talk as wildly as you do.”

“Do not compare Mohammedanism with our holy religion. Christ came with peace on his lips, Mohammed with a sword in his hand. And what has Mohammedanism done for the countries where it is even now decaying?”

“It solidified them,” said Valentine lightly. “So I have read. And all Mohammedans don’t live up to the precepts of the Koran, you know.”

“Mohammedanism is rent by frightful quarrels, and if you have read about it you know the immorality of many of its religious teachers——”

“So are Christians immoral.”

“That is because they do not live up to the teachings of our divine model. But I do not know that it is of very much use to argue with you, Valentine. You misunderstand so sadly. I have heard you reasoning with others—notably, one evening when you spoke of the crucifixion. You said that Jesus Christ could not have died in six hours on the cross, that he was only unconscious when they bore him away to the tomb. I wished to say, his broken heart—broken by the sins of the world; you forget that—but I was too much agitated. I think that we can only pray for you——”

“I do not wish your prayers,” he said quickly; “and I am not unhappy as you think I am—that is, about religious matters. You mistake me.”

“If you think that my religion is a delusion my prayers will not affect you,” said Vivienne; “but have you not a lingering belief in the creed of your forefathers?”

“No,” he said stoutly, “I have not.”

“Stanton has,” she murmured happily; “I could not marry him if he had not.”

“You are young,” pursued Valentine; “do you ever feel a horror of death? What do you think would become of you if a thunderbolt should fall from the sky and strike you dead ten minutes from now?”

“What do you fancy would become of me?” she asked softly.

“I do not know.”

“But I know,” said the girl, looking with joyful eyes on the splendor of the setting sun. “I know whom I have believed, and I do not fear death, because I know that when my soul leaves this body there is prepared for it a dwelling more glorious than anything I can imagine. That is the end of my belief, ‘I know,’ and the end of yours is, ‘I do not know.’”

He turned his blind face toward hers and pictured to himself its transfigured expression.

“Will you not come to the house now?” she said quietly. “Stanton will be delighted to find you there for tea.”

“I suppose you think that I am too wicked to be left alone,” he said as he stumbled to his feet and put his hand in hers.

“No, I do not,” she said.

“You and Stargarde are as much alike as a pair of twin doves,” he grumbled as he moved slowly along beside her.

Stanton, returning home half an hour later, stopped short in the hall, struck by the long unheard sound of music in the drawing room.

“Cast thy burden upon the Lord and he shall sustain thee,” came welling on a soft sweet volume of song through the house.

He drew back the portiÈre. Valentine stood leaning on the piano, his face calm and peaceful, his unseeing eyes in their glasses turned toward Vivienne, who sat with downcast eyelids playing for him.

At the close of the song Armour entered the room. “Is it you, old man?” asked the singer. “Your pretty bird lured me here. Don’t be jealous of me,” he continued childishly, and feeling his way toward the place where Armour stood with features painfully composed. “I’m tired of women—except as sisters,” he added with an apologetic gesture in Vivienne’s direction.

“Let there be no talk of jealousy,” said Armour, laying his hand affectionately on Valentine’s shoulder. “You and Vivienne will henceforth be brother and sister.”