GABRIELLE was in such good spirits that she was even inclined to trifle a little with her lover's evident perplexity.

'Did you ever read any of Plutarch?' she asked him suddenly.

He was amazed; but he was equal to the occasion, and answered with perfect gravity:

'Yes, I read a good deal of Plutarch, long ago. Generals and great soldiers of all kinds usually carry copies of Plutarch about with them in their campaigning; so their biographers always tell us. They are the kind of generals who always sleep on little iron bedsteads at home, no matter what splendour may be all around them. I always associate Plutarch with great generals and iron bedsteads.'

I found an old translation of Plutarch at home.

long ago, and I used to be very fond of reading it. I used to like the life of Alexander very much. Didn't you like the life of Alexander?'

Immensely; and also that of Numa Pompilius: to say nothing of Martinus Scriblerus, and Thomas Diafoirus.'

'No; these are not in Plutarch.

But do you

remember about Alexander and his friend the physician?'

'I do remember it. But just now I had rather you spoke to me as if I didn't.' He knew she had some serious meaning, and he was anxious to get at it as soon as possible.

'Well, Alexander was sick, and he had a friend a physician, whom he loved and trusted. I am like Alexander in that; I have a friend whom I love and trust-'

She stopped.

Tell me the rest,' Clarkson said.

"Yes; the physician was to cure him with some draught, and just then Alexander got a secret message warning him that the friend was false and meant to

poison him. He read the letter, and he showed it to no one. The physician came with the draught. Alexander looked into his eyes and drank all that was in the cup; and then he showed the letter.'

She stopped again.

"Yes, Gabrielle?'

'Oh, don't you see?' she asked impatiently. 'Where would have been the proof of his faith in his friend if he had shown him the letter and questioned him before he swallowed the draught? Very well, you must let me be Alexander now.'

She held out her hand to him and he pressed it to his lips. He began to understand her little classical allegory.

'Go to New Orleans, my friend,' she said, 'find out all you can and all you like; prove anything you will for the satisfaction of the world and yourself, if you care about it; but you shall not prove anything for me. No one ever shall say that I waited for any evidence. You must make me your wife before you go, or I will never be your wife at all. Nothing on earth shall make me change from this resolution. If you refuse this proof of my confidence in you, you refuse me.'

What could Fielding do? Was it likely he would refuse this proof of her confidence, or endeavour to reason her into caution? It gave him a feeling of joy and of pride such as he had scarcely had even when first he knew that she loved him. The more likely it was that all her friends and their little world would think her rash, the more he loved her for her trust, and the more he felt that he must for ever be worthy of it. He pledged himself to her in one or two simple words that he would never take one step or travel one mile to prove Paulina's story false until he had made her his wife, who would most of all human beings become a victim if that so-called story were to prove true. He left her that evening happy, proud, and humbled. He was deeply humbled in all his joy and his pride because he could not see how he could ever make himself truly worthy of her. A certain sensation of fear, utterly unknown before to his easy, careless nature, began to take possession of him. Suppose he were to die and leave her what grief that would be to her! Suppose by some strange concurrence of evil fates he found himself unable to establish his own identity to the satisfaction of all the world? He had read of such things.

The controversy about Sebastian of Portugal, dear to our grandmothers who read romances, has never been settled. Suppose falsehood and wickedness were for once to win the day against him and against Gabrielle, and people were to believe that he had wronged beyond measure of words that most generous and trusting woman? Suppose that while he was away in New Orleans, Gabrielle were to die? He tortured himself with vain irrepressible doubts and fears. It is thus with the purest happiness man can have. Like the miser's money, the despot's ill-gotten power, it brings its torturing anxieties with it. We have got it-can we keep it? Is it to be stolen from us-torn from us? Are there not threats and dangers here, there, all around?

Strangely, perhaps, such doubts just now hardly intruded themselves on Gabrielle at all. She had become a different woman since she had made her compact with her lover. She had for some days been looking depressed and spiritless; quite unlike her old self. Now she was all brightness and high spirits again. She feared nothing; distrusted nothing; was satisfied that all would come well with her and her