way, set on the right road again by the Reverend Spardek, I pushed
open the door of the red marble hall. I entered.

"The freshness of the perfumed crypt did me good. No place can be so
sinister that it is not, as it were, purified by the murmur of running
water. The cascade, gurgling in the middle hall, comforted me. One day
before an attack I was lying with my section in deep grass, waiting
for the moment, the blast of the bugle, which would demand that we
leap forward into the hail of bullets. A stream was at my feet. I
listened to its fresh rippling. I admired the play of light and shade
in the transparent water, the little beasts, the little black fish,
the green grass, the yellow wrinkled sand.... The mystery of water
always has carried me out of myself.

"Here, in this magic hall, my thoughts were held by the dark
cascade. It felt friendly. It kept me from faltering in the midst of
these rigid evidences of so many monstrous sacrifices.... Number 26.
It was he all right. Lieutenant Douglas Kaine, born at Edinburgh,
September 21, 1862. Died at Ahaggar, July 16, 1890. Twenty-eight.
He wasn't even twenty-eight! His face was thin under the coat of
orichalch. His mouth sad and passionate. It was certainly he. Poor
youngster.--Edinburgh,--I knew Edinburgh, without ever having been
there. From the wall of the castle you can see the Pentland hills.
"Look a little lower down," said Stevenson's sweet Miss Flora to Anne
of Saint-Yves, "look a little lower down and you will see, in the fold
of the hill, a clump of trees and a curl of smoke that rises from
among them. That is Swanston Cottage, where my brother and I live with
my aunt. If it really pleases you to see it, I shall be glad." When he
left for Darfour, Douglas Kaine must surely have left in Edinburgh a
Miss Flora, as blonde as Saint-Yves' Flora. But what are these slips
of girls beside Antinea! Kaine, however sensible a mortal, however
made for this kind of love, had loved otherwise. He was dead. And here
was number 27, on account of whom Kaine dashed himself on the rocks of
the Sahara, and who, in his turn, is dead also.

"To die, to love. How naturally the word resounded in the red marble
hall. How Antinea seemed to tower above that circle of pale statues!
Does love, then, need so much death in order that it may be
multiplied? Other women, in other parts of the world, are doubtless as
beautiful as Antinea, more beautiful perhaps. I hold you to witness
that I