The Moon out of Reach Part 82

"Beloved," he said, "I think we can see why, even now. Isn't our love . . . which we've fought to keep pure and clean . . . been crucified for . . . a thousand times better and finer thing than the love we might have s.n.a.t.c.hed at and taken when it wasn't ours to take?"

She smiled up at him, a tender gravity in her face. Her thoughts slipped back to the little song which seemed to hold so strange a symbolism of her own life. The third verse had come true at last. She repeated it aloud, very softly:

"But sometimes G.o.d on His great white Throne Looks down from the Heaven above, And lays in the hands that are empty The tremulous Star of Love."

Peter stooped and kissed her lips. There was a still, quiet pa.s.sion in his kiss, but there was something more--something deep and intrans.m.u.table--the same unchanging troth which, he had given her at Tintagel of love that would last "through this world into the next."

THE END