ngth hath gone from me;
I am a child that cries for a stronger hand to lean on and can find
none. The dreams which I had are gone from me, and my tongue is lead. In
all the earth is none so lonely as am I!"

Again he buried his face in his hands, crouching against the wall
beneath the window. The music rose to him like a breath from that
scarcely vanished past, playing upon him,--calloused body and sensitive
tortured soul,--conjuring forth visions of dead golden hours, weaving
its own poignant spell. Voices from the hall mingled with it, in talk
and heedless laughter; healths were drunk and speeches made. When life
was gay and careless, when wine was red and eyes were bright and faces
fair, who would pause to give a thought to sorrow?

Minutes dropped away, link by link, from the golden chain of Time. All
at once Nicanor raised his head, slowly, like one unwilling to meet once
more what must be met. The loneliness of the moonlight revealed the
scarring passion in his face, signs visible of the chaos of inward
tumult which tore him, of the slow forces gathering for the inevitable
battle waged somewhen, somehow, by every mortal soul. And that face,
gaunt, with haunted, shadowed eyes, looked all at once strangely purged
of the heat of its lawlessness, for on it was the first presage of the
fierce slow travail of spirit rending flesh.

"What is this that I have done!" he said unsteadily. "I have boasted
unworthily, ravening like a brute beast in my triumph over thee, and by
my boasting have I shamed thee, thou lily among women. Was I blind, that
I could not see that thine is the triumph, over my passion and over me?
Thou art another's, O my Lady whom I love so well; and every thought I
hold of thy caresses doeth thee dishonor. For thou art pure and holy,
and though it puts all worlds between us, yet I would not have thee
otherhow. Yet I cannot but remember thy voice, thine eyes, thy little
clinging hands, the perfume of thy hair; they are all that is left to
me--dear memories, bitter sweet! But I may not boast of them, for thy
fair fame, which thou first didst teach me to honor, is thus much in my
hands, and I, even the outcast and despised, have it still to guard thee
in this little thing. Once was I filled with base pride for that I had
made thee love me in answer to my love; and oh, a blind, blind fool was
I, not knowing that my love for thee was then no love at all! But thou,
in thy white innocence, didst place thine