A Mans Reach

actised with other girls were entirely left out of their sweet, young intercourse. He quickly saw the wonders of her nature, and although they had joke and badinage, there was never the least cheap sentiment between them. Once they were off on a brisk walk with faces to a wild red sunset which flung the bare branches clean into space, and shot through the highest arch of the Cathedral tower like a burning message from the heart of God. " Then fire was sky and sky was fire and both one ecstasy," she quoted slowly?meditatively. " In youth I looked to these very skies, and probing their immensities, I found God there:? His visible power "?he responded. " Comrade," she whispered. " Sweetheart," was his answer. She was suddenly aloof, remote, gazing westward with a rapt devotion which he dare not invade. Young as she was, she had a genius for retiring within her quaint young dignity, which sweetly forbade the least intrusion. She was only at home a week this Christmas-time, and yet that week ever hung over Randolph's life like a stretch of translucent atmosphere high above earthly care. In this wonderful " spirit-air " everything assumed a new and lovelier shape; it was a sort of heavenly mist which obscured the real day. In these days the little Park between his house and hers became the sacred gateway to her presence; the trees, the statues standing so firmly in the grass which winter skies could not ungreen, the spires springing gladly beyond the tree...