pride and ignorance that sent me here!" She spoke quietly,
with a kind of wonder. "Just blind, ignorant feelings, I took them
for--for something too great and mysterious. It's all very strange to
look back on, and try to put into words. I remember painted glass, and
solemn music--and thinking--then!--that I knew this lovely and terrible
world--and its Maker and Master." She looked down the dusky lanes,
where glowworm lanterns began to bob and wink. "Oh, this land! where you
see the days running into years!"

"The Dragon's a wise old beast," he ventured. "He teaches--something."

She assented gravely:--

"And in those days I thought it was a dark continent--of lost souls."

"There are no dark continents," declared Heywood suddenly, in a broken
voice. "The heart of one man--can hold more darkness--You would never
see into it--"

"Don't!" she cried sharply. "What did we promise?"

They stood close in the dusk, and a tremor, a wave, passed through them
both.

"I forgot--I couldn't help"--he stammered; then, as they stumbled
forward, he regained his former tone, keen and ready. "Mustn't get to
fussing about our work, must we?--Curious thing: speaking of dreams, you
know. The other night I thought you were somewhere out on board a junk,
and Flounce with you. I swam like anything, miles and miles, but
couldn't get out to you. Worked like steam, and no headway. Flounce knew
I was coming, but you didn't. Deuced odd, how real it seemed."

She laughed, as though they had walked past some danger.

"And speaking of dragons," she rejoined. "They _do_ help. The man in
the story, that dipped in dragon's blood, was made invulnerable."

"Oh?" He stood plainly at a loss. "Oh, I see. German, wasn't he?--Pity
they didn't pop Rudie Hackh in!"

Her swift upward glance might have been admiration, if she had not
said:--

"Your mind works very slowly."

"Oh?" Again he paused, as though somewhat hurt; then answered
cheerfully: "Dare say. Always did. Thought at first you meant the
rattan-juice kind, from Sumatra."

The gate of the town yawned black. From the streets glimmered a few
lanterns, like candles in a long cave. But shunning these unfriendly
corridors, he led her roundabout, now along the walls, now through the
dim ways of an outlying hamlet. A prolonged shriek of growing fright and
anguish came slowly toward them--the cry of a wheelbarrow carrying the
great carcass of a pig, waxy white and waxy red, like an image from a