beside her.

"Forgive me ... forgive me, Selene ... forgive me...." he murmured,
unconsciously metrical. At any other time Sophy would have teased him
for it. Now she did not even notice it. She had been thinking: "George
Eliot says somewhere that 'we can endure our worst sorrows but once'....
I am enduring mine twice...."

She put her hand on the bowed head.

"Never mind, dear," she said.

He seized her bare arm in both hot hands, and his lips, still hotter,
ran over it. She shivered, trying to draw it away from him. He thought
that she shivered with love. He sprang to his feet, and, tall woman as
she was, so great was the feverish strength of his desire, he drew her
easily up from the low chair into his arms. His breath reeking of spirit
poured over her half averted face. She could not bear to struggle with
him. That would seem the last degradation.

"I'm tired, dear...." she whispered. "I'm deadly tired...."

And he laughed. And this low exultant laugh, that had once made such
music in her ears, seemed like that silent tittering of malicious gods
grown audible.

"No ... Morris ... no...." she said, bracing herself against him by her
strong, slight arms. He laughed on. He began to whisper incoherently in
her averted ear....

"Oh, moon-woman ... oh, virgin-goddess.... Don't I know all your sweet
reluctances by heart?... Isn't that what made me mad to conquer you?...
You tempted me yourself.... Listen.... I never confessed it.... Now I'll
confess for penance.... Do you know what made me first swear I'd marry
you?... Your own words, Selene!... Your own words!... It was a verse of
yours I read.... Oh, such a cock-sure ... Olympian verse!... Listen: Do
you remember?... Here's how it went...."

He muttered her own words of passionate freedom into her averted,
shrinking ear:

"I am the Wind's, and the Wind is mine!
No mortal lover shall me discover;
Freedom clear is our bridal-wine--
Oh, lordly Wind! Oh, perfect lover!..."

"There!--That's what made me set my will like steel to conquer you....
_I'll_ be her 'mortal lover' I said.... And see!-- You are in my
arms...."

He stopped aghast. In his arms, heavily drooping, her face thrust from
him against her own shoulder, she was weeping like one broken-hearted.

XV

The situation had solved itself after that. Dismayed and thunderstruck,
Loring had been glad to loose his weeping goddess from his arms. It had
never occurred to him that his