has
slain its thousands, but physical charm has slain its tens of thousands!
Whatever Ingolby's defects, however, infinitely more than the girl's
beauty, more than the palpitating life in her, than red lips and bright
eye, than warm breast and clasping hand, was something beneath all which
would last, or should last, when the hand was palsied and the eye was
dim.

"I am here. Can't you see me?"

All that he had regained in life in her little upper room rushed upon
him, and with outstretched arms and in a voice choked with feeling, he
said:

"See you! Dear God--To see you and all the world once more! It is being
born again to me. I haven't learned to talk in my new world yet; but
I know three words of the language. I love you. Come--I'll be good to
you."

She drew back from him, and her look said that she would read him to the
uttermost word in his life's book, would see the heart of this wonderful
thing; and then with a hungry cry, she flung her arms around his neck
and pressed her wet eyes against his flushed cheek.

A half-hour later, as they wandered back to the house he suddenly
stopped, put his hands on her shoulders, looked earnestly in her eyes,
and said:

"God's good to me. I hope I'll remember that."

"You won't be so blind as to forget," she answered, and she wound her
fingers in his with a feeling which was more than the simple love of
woman for man. "I've got much more to remember than you have,"
she added. Suddenly she put both hands upon his breast. "You don't
understand; you can't understand, but I tell you that I shall have to
fight hard if I am to be all you want me to be. I have got a past to
forget; you have a past you want to remember--that's the difference. I
must tell you the truth: it's in my veins, that old life, in spite of
all. Listen. I ought to have told you, and I meant to tell you before
this happened, but when I saw you there, and you held out your arms to
me, I forgot everything. Yet still I must tell you now, though perhaps
you will hate me when you know. The old life--I hate it, but it calls
me, and I have an impulse to go back to it even though I hate it.
Listen. I'll tell you what happened the other day. It's terrible, but
it's true. I was walking in the woods--"

Thereupon she told him of her being seized and carried to the Gipsy
camp, and of all that happened there to the last detail. She even had
the courage to tell of all she felt there; but when she had finished,
wit