have had one day of glory."

"I think you may kiss me, in memory of that one day--or of a few minutes
in that day," said Celia.

Their lips brushed each other in a swift, almost perfunctory caress.

Theron went his way at a hurried pace, the sobered tones of her
"good-bye" beating upon his brain with every measure of the droning
waltz-music.




PART IV



CHAPTER XXV


The memory of the kiss abode with Theron. Like Aaron's rod, it swallowed
up one by one all competing thoughts and recollections, and made his
brain its slave.

Even as he strode back through the woods to the camp-meeting, it was the
kiss that kept his feet in motion, and guided their automatic course.
All along the watches of the restless night, it was the kiss that bore
him sweet company, and wandered with him from one broken dream of bliss
to another. Next day, it was the kiss that made of life for him a sort