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It was of a glorious purple evening late in October that Allanwith two or three of the hardier Folk on the te for the Pauillac on Newport Heights, to which a broad and well-graded roadway now extended through the jungle

Entering the home-cave suddenly--and it was home now indeed, with its broad stone fireplace, its cos, its furs, itsrushes--he stopped, toil-worn and weary, to view the well-loved place

"Well, little wife! Busy, as usual? Always busy, sweetheart?"

At his greeting Beatrice looked up as though startled She was sitting in a low easy-chair he had made for her of split bamboos cleverly lashed and softly cushioned

At her left hand, on the palotten millionaire's palace in Atlanta Its soft radiance illu a wondrous aureole of her clustered hair, as in old paintings of the Madonna at the Annunciation

A presage gripped the s with pain, yet with delicious hope and joy as she turned toward hi in her face, some new, beatified, maternal loveliness, not to be analyzed or understood, betrayed her wondrous secret

With a little gasp, she dropped into her lap the bit of needlework and sought to hide it with her hands--a gesture wholly girlish yet--to hide and guard it with those hands, so useful and beautiful, so precious and so dearly loved

But Allan, breathing hard and deep, strode to her, his face aflaether in the gentle strength of his rough hands and pressed them to his heart

Beside her he knelt silently; he encircled her with his right ar minute their eyes met

His brimmed with sudden tears Hers fell, and her head drooped down upon his breast, and--as once before, at the cathedral--an eloquent tide of crimson mounted from breast to throat, from cheek to tendrilled hair

About his neck her arhtened

No as uttered there under the golden la kiss he pressed, reverently, proudly, upon her brow, reneith ten-time depth their eternal sacrament of love