ed by any mask, in whatever struggle lies ahead of us.
If you get through to the world, and to life again, you get through as
a woman.

"If not, you die as one. But the disguise is done with, and gone. You
understand me!"

"Yes. I understand," she answered, and stood peering up at him. Not
even the white welts and ridges cut in her flesh by the long wearing
of the mask could make her face anything but very beautiful. Her
wonderful eyes mirrored far more, as they looked into this strange
man's, than would be easy to write down in words.

"I understand," she repeated. "If this is death, I couldn't have
dreamed or hoped for a better one. In that, at least, we can be
eternally together--you and I!"

Silence fell, save for the shuddering roar of the black river, that
rose with vapors from the dark pit. Man and woman, they searched out
each other's souls with their gaze.

Then all at once the Master took her hand, and brought it to his heart
and held it there. The lamp-shine, obliquely striking upward from the
floor, cast deep shadows over their faces; and these shadows seemed
symbolic of the shadows of death closing about them at this hour of
self-revelation.

"Listen," said the Master, in a wholly other voice from any that
had ever come from his lips. "I am going to tell you something. At a
moment like this, a man speaks only the exact truth. This is the exact
truth.

"In all the years of my life and in all my wanderings up and down this
world, I have never seen a woman--till now--whom I felt that I could
love. I have lived like an anchorite, celled in absolute isolation
from womankind. Incredible as it may seem to you, I have never even
kissed a woman, with a kiss of love. But--I am going to kiss you,
now."

He took her face in both his hands, drew it up for a moment, gazed
at it with a fixity of passion that seemed to burn. The woman's eyes
drooped shut. Her lips yearned to his. Then his stern arms in-drew her
to his breast, and for a moment she remained there, silently.

All at once he put her from him.

"Now, go!" he commanded. "I shall follow, close. And wait for me--if
there is any waiting!"

He picked up one of the two remaining wine-sacks, and put it into her
hands.

"Cling to this, through everything!" he commanded. "Cling, as you love
life. Cling, as you share my hope for what may be, if life is granted
us! And--the mercy-bullet, if it comes to that!

"Now--good-bye!"

She smiled silently and