ant to go back,' she cried like a strayed child. 'I want
to go back. I am afraid. Take me back to the light.'

"'He tried to comfort her with gentle words and talk of his
passion and her beauty, but to no effect. She shrank from
the unnatural flesh of him; she panted as though the dust
of tombs were in her nostrils; and at last he stood off,
looking at her with a mild trouble, and then he went away,
and she was sitting once more alone amid the traffic of
hushed voices and moving shadows.

"'There came no night,' she told us, in a voice that
quavered uncertainly, 'always that unlovely twilight only;
and I sat on the grass and wept. She had no sensation of
hunger or sleep in that world, the whole of her stay. She
stayed in the same place, dreary and waiting, with no
active hope and little fear--only a longing for the
sunlight; and at last a dull pain of yearning for the rough
red head and beefy texture of her human husband. A week,
mind you--a week she stayed there thus, save when Tagalash
would come up unheard to court her again.

"After that first time he was a more cautious lover, and
sat at her feet with lowered eyes pleading with her. One
answer always stilled him, and that was her cry of 'Take me
back; I am afraid.'

"'You were not fashioned for a rude love,' he said to her
once.

"'Ah,' she answered then, 'but there is that in me that
welcomes a heavy hand and a strong arm.'

"'The others are like that,' he answered, as though
speaking to himself. 'But they have no such hungry beauty
as you.'

"'My beauty,' she told him, 'is a chance vessel for a mere
woman's soul.'

"At last he became wistful, and seemed afraid to ask: for
what he desired. 'But I can yet give to you,' he told her.
'Say what you would have. I can bring it you.'

"'Then give me back to my world,' she cried. 'Do that, and
I will thank you on my knees.'

"He sighed. 'Is that all you desire?' he said. 'Supposing I
granted you that, is there nothing you would take back with
you?'

"'No,' she answered.

"'No charm?' he asked again. 'Not a charm to compel love? I
can give you even that.'

"'Take me back,' she begged, 'and teach me how to win my
husband to forgive me.'

"He smiled very sadly, and she could almost have pitied
him, so poor he seemed, bereaved of his desire.

"'You are greater than Tagalash,' he said slowly, 'since
you make a slave of him. You shall have what you will. Go
back to your world, my beloved, my love that