ssured me they knew all about you. He made a horrible grimace at me."

"It doesn't matter," said the girl. "I didn't want--I would not have
gone."

Heyst raised his eyes.

"Wonderful intuition! As I continued to press him, Wang made that
very remark about you. When he smiles, his face looks like a conceited
death's head. It was his very last remark that you wouldn't want to. I
went away then."

She leaned back against a tree. Heyst faced her in the same attitude of
leisure, as if they had done with time and all the other concerns of the
earth. Suddenly, high above their heads the roof of leaves whispered at
them tumultuously and then ceased.

"That was a strange notion of yours, to send me away," she said. "Send
me away? What for? Yes, what for?"

"You seem indignant," he remarked listlessly.

"To these savages, too!" she pursued. "And you think I would have gone?
You can do what you like with me--but not that, not that!"

Heyst looked into the dim aisles of the forest. Everything was so still
now that the very ground on which they stood seemed to exhale silence
into the shade.

"Why be indignant?" he remonstrated. "It has not happened. I gave up
pleading with Wang. Here we are, repulsed! Not only without power to
resist the evil, but unable to make terms for ourselves with the worthy
envoys, the envoys extraordinary of the world we thought we had done
with for years and years. And that's bad, Lena, very bad."

"It's funny," she said thoughtfully. "Bad? I suppose it is. I don't know
that it is. But do you? Do you? You talk as if you didn't believe in
it."

She gazed at him earnestly.

"Do I? Ah! That's it. I don't know how to talk. I have managed to refine
everything away. I've said to the Earth that bore me: 'I am I and you
are a shadow.' And, by Jove, it is so! But it appears that such words
cannot be uttered with impunity. Here I am on a Shadow inhabited
by Shades. How helpless a man is against the Shades! How is one to
intimidate, persuade, resist, assert oneself against them? I have lost
all belief in realities . . . Lena, give me your hand."

She looked at him surprised, uncomprehending.

"Your hand," he cried.

She obeyed; he seized it with avidity as if eager to raise it to his
lips, but halfway up released his grasp. They looked at each other for a
time.

"What's the matter, dear?" she whispered timidly.

"Neither force nor conviction," Heyst muttered wearily to himself. "How
am I to meet