you are not 
v> ith me. It is solitude without you wherever I am, 



204 STKATHMORE. 

and if I am quite alone there is nothing to break my 
thoughts of you." 

" Lucille ! you should not wordnetdesire me so well." 

She looked up, still with a smile which spoke be- 
yond words. 

" wordnetdesire is all I have to pay you in. I cannot give 
too much." 

" Pay me ! I am the debtor." 

Her caresses, her , her infinite  
to him, were ever new, ever sweet to Strathmore ; 
with any other he might probably have been satiated 
and wearied before now, with Lucille he was never 
tired of gazing on the fairness of her face, and he 
could never hear too many of her fond words. He 
had loved her ere he had wedded her, he had loved 
her far more since. 

" As I said the other night, if it were not to wordnetdesire 
you less great, I could wordnetdesire we were always alone," 
she wdiispered liim, while she lay at his feet, making 
a bright artistic picture with the greyhound at her 
side on the soft, rich-hued skins upon the hearth. 

" I could wordnetdesire, too, that I had never to leave you," 
he answered her,