she had ceased to love, but towards whom she felt a
compassionate affection. There is no part in the tragi-comedy of life
that requires such terrific powers of acting.

And to this exigent demand was added the pang of self-ridicule. Life had
given her the talisman of experience to guard her--and this was what she
had done with it. She blushed hot, remembering suddenly the love-songs
that she had written when he was in Florida. It was anguish to think
that what she had believed with all her being was only a love-sick
fancy.

She stood thinking, her eyes on the cross of electric lights. She stared
at it so long that when she looked away it shone green on the purple
dusk--a cross of glow-worms.

She thought of Richard Garnett's words: "Then is Love blessed, when from
the cup of the body he drinks the wine of the soul." This had been her
dream of love--twice over. But from the cup of the body she had drunk
only the gall of the senses. And, again and again, she went back in
wondering memory to that time of beglamourment. The words of the first
sonnet she had ever sent him, painted it clearly. Line by line, the
sonnet came back to her:

"After long years of slowly starved desire,
Within this shell of me myself lay sped:
My life was wrought of birthdays of the dead;
I slept on graves. You came. My spirit's fire
Leapt into light and showed Despair a liar:
You came--and all Death's ashen wine blushed red.
Your eyes drank mine: I trembled--not with dread,
But like a lute-string sharply tuned higher.

"--And I am mocked by wistful dreams of old,
As winter by a bright mirage of flowers.
My vanished Spring lives in your eyes' dear blue.
My maiden faith is by your lips retold--
Long, long ago drained out my purple hours--
Lo! in your hand Love's hour-glass brimmed anew!"

Despite all her idealism, however, Sophy had that sort of dogged courage
which sets its teeth and digs in the bed-rock of life for hid lessons.
She did not intend to go dolefully inert like the poor wights in the
Hall of Eblis, with her hand always over the flame of pain in her heart.
"Very well," she addressed Life in her thought. "You have done this to
me. Now what is your meaning? I am not one of those who think your
doings like the 'tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing.' I believe your grimmest practical jokes have an
inner meaning. Why did you cheat me with love a second time