gh there was a locked and guarded
chamber in it of which the key was lost....

Hand in hand they walked homeward in the faint twilight glow. He left
her at the church gate, and himself turned away, back toward the house
of Nicodemus, walking with bent head and broad shoulders bowed. But his
face was not all sombre; something of the courage he had given her
remained to him, and his eyes were softened with the new tenderness
which still lived. For it is one of the compensations as well as of the
penalties of life, that what one gives, one shall get again.

At the threshold sudden distaste seized him; after what he had been
through, the thought of the well-meaning, brutish chatter of Nicodemus
and his wife was not to be endured. He turned back again and went as far
from them as he could get, down to the river-ford. Here he sat upon the
beach, away from the passing of the people; and the waters rippled at
his feet. The west had cleared; overhead the faint rose of the sky was
paling, but across the broad river was splashed a pastel of orange and
blue and crimson; and the red, misty ball of the sun was dipping below
the world's dark rim.

"This is love also," Nicanor said aloud, as though one had been by to
hear him. "As she loveth me, so I love. There is love of a man for a
maid, and of husband for wife; and there is love of sire for child, and
of a friend for a friend, and of these all are different. Yet it is all
one love, touching life on every side.... Why, then, it takes in all the
world!"

His voice changed and rang with quick and startled exultation.

"Gods of my fathers! I have found it--I have found that thing I sought!
It is love, not fear, nor wrath, nor power, that gave that little Child
his power! And because it takes in all the world, this little One of
whom men tell hath this love, then, for all the world. Now this is
strange! Oh, Little Brother, I have found my tale, and it shall be
greater than any tale that I have made before!"

His eyes deepened and flashed to the quick surge of power which shook
him; now well and truly should all men name him Nicanor of the silver
tongue. He was a slave, yet men should bow before him. No iron bars
might longer hold him down; Fate, that mocking Fate of his, could no
longer keep him chained. But over all the triumph in his face there grew
also the old awe as in those days of boyhood, long ago, when first he
knew himself for but the tool with which the work was wrought