t it. One bitter night
last February, for instance, I helped a man--one of the insurgents--who
had taken to the mountains with his wife and children--to carry his
wife, a dying woman, over a mountain-pass to the only place where she
could possibly get help and shelter. We carried her on a litter, six men
taking turns. The cold and the fatigue were such that I shudder now when
I think of it. Yet at the end I seemed to myself a man reborn. I was
happier than I had ever been in my life. Some mystic virtue had flowed
into me. Among those men and women, instead of being the selfish beast
I've been all these years, I can forget myself. Death seems
nothing--brotherhood--liberty!--everything! And yet--"

His face relaxed, became ironical, reflective. But he held the hands
close, his grasp of them hidden by the folds of fur which hung about
her.

"And <i>yet</i>--I can say to you without a qualm--put this marriage which
has already come to naught behind you--and come with me! Ashe cramps
you. He blames you--you blame yourself. What <i>reality</i> has all that? It
makes you miserable--it wastes life. <i>I</i> accept your nature--I don't ask
you to be anything else than yourself--your wild, vain, adorable self!
Ashe asks you to put restraint on yourself--to make painful efforts--to
be good for his sake--the sake of something outside. <i>I</i> say--come and
look at the elemental things--death and battle--hatred, solitude, love.
<i>They'll</i> sweep us out of ourselves!--no need to strive and cry for
it--into the great current of the world's being--bring us close to the
forces at the root of things--the forces which create--and destroy. Dip
your heart in that stream, Kitty, and feel it grow in your breast. Take
a nurse's dress--put your hand in mine--and come! I can't promise you
luxuries or ease. You've had enough of those. Come and open another door
in the House of Life! Take starving women and hunted children into your
arms--- feel with them--weep with them--look with them into the face of
death! Make friends with nature--with rocks, forests, torrents--with
night and dawn, which you've never seen, Kitty! They'll love
you--they'll support you--the rough people--and the dark forests.
They'll draw nature's glamour round you--they'll pour her balm into your
soul. And I shall be with you--beside you!--your guardian--your
lover--your <i>lover</i>, Kitty--till death do us part."

He looked at her with the smile which was his only but