f her, the heavy and sweet burden in his arms. She
tried to speak, and he heard a whisper:

"Why? Why? Why?"

"Because it is my place, Coira!" said he. "Because I cannot live away
from you. Because we belong together."

The girl struggled weakly and pushed against him. Once more he heard
whispering words and made out that she tried to say:

"Go back to her! Go back to her! You belong there!"

But at that he laughed aloud.

"I thought so, too," said he, "but she thinks otherwise. She'll have
none of me, Coira. It's Richard Hartley now. Coira, can you love a
jilted man? I've been jilted--thrown over--dismissed."

Her head came up in a flash and she stared at him, suddenly rigid and
tense in his arms.

"Is that true?" she demanded.

"Yes, my love!" said he.

And she began to weep, with long, comfortable sobs, her face hidden in
the hollow of his shoulder. On one other occasion she had wept before
him, and he had been horribly embarrassed, but he bore this present
tempest without, as it were, winking. He gloried in it. He tried to say
so. He tried to whisper to her, his lips pressed close to the ear that
was nearest them, but he found that he had no speech. Words would not
come to his tongue; it trembled and faltered and was still for sheer
inadequacy.

Rather oddly, in that his thoughts were chaos, swallowed up in the surge
of feeling, a memory struck through to him of that other exaltation
which had swept him to the stars. He looked upon it and was amazed
because now he saw it, in clear light, for the thing it had been. He saw
it for a fantasy, a self-evoked wraith of the imagination, a dizzy
flight of the spirit through spirit space. He saw that it had not been
love at all, and he realized how little a part Helen Benham had ever
really played in it. A cold and still-eyed figure for him to wrap the
veil of his imagination round, that was what she had been. There were
times when the sweep of his upward flight had stirred her a little,
wakened in her some vague response, but for the most part she had stood
aside and looked on, wondering.

The mist was rent away from that rainbow-painted cobweb, and at last the
man saw and understood. He gave an exclamation of wonder, and the girl
who loved him raised her head once more, and the two looked each into
the other's eyes for a long time. They fell into hushed and broken
speech.

"I have loved you so long, so long," she said, "and so hopelessly! I
never thought--