that I blame you. It is hard to believe in good
when we think we see evil."

"I am thankful," he answered, "that you are back in your shrine. Forgive
me my error."

She looked at him fixedly. "But concerning Lewis--there, too, was error.
Why should you continue enemies?"

There was a silence, then Cary spoke, sadly and bitterly. "You must
leave me that. There are men who are born to be antagonists. When that
is so, they find each other out over half the world, and circumstance
may be trusted to square for them a battle-ground. Mr. Rand and I, I
fear, will still be enemies."

"Then what I have told you makes no difference--"

"You are mistaken there. What you have told me shall have its weight."

"Why, then," cried Jacqueline, "you cannot judge him as you have been
judging throughout a spring and summer! You are just and generous--will
you not try to be friends? Ere this men have left off being foes, and
many and many a battlefield is now thick with wild flowers. I should be
happy if you and Lewis would clasp hands."

Her voice was persuasion's own, and there was a tremulous smile upon her
red lips, and a soft light in her dark eyes. "There is a thing that I
have long divined," she said, "and that is the strange regard for what
you think and what you are that exists deep, deep down in his mind. It
lies so deep that he is mainly ignorant that it is there. He thinks that
you and he are all inimical. But it is there like an ancient treasure
far down in the ocean depths, far below the surface storm. There is in
him a preoccupation with you. Often and often, when questions of right
and wrong arise, I know that his thought descends to that secret place
where he keeps an image of you! I know that he interrogates that image,
'Is it thus or so that you would do?' And if, at times, scornfully or
sullenly or with indifference, he does the opposite to what the image
says, yet none the less at the next decision will his thought fly to
that same judgment bar! It is an attraction that he fights against, a
habit of the mind that he would break if he could--but it is
there--indeed, indeed it is there! It is despotic--I do not think that
he can escape. Ah, if you and he were friends, you would be friends
indeed!" She looked at him pleadingly, with her hand outstretched.

Cary shook his head. "You are mistaken," he said harshly. "I am
conscious of no place where my spirit and that of Mr. Rand may touch. I
cannot explain; we are e