. With a swift, darting
movement she knelt up in front of him, her clasped hands on his knees.

"Why did you save me just now?" she said. "Why wouldn't you let me die?"

He looked full at her. She vibrated like a winged creature on the verge
of taking flight. But her eyes--her eyes sought his with a strange
assurance, as though they saw in him a comrade.

"Why did you make me live when I wanted to die?" she insisted. "Is life
so desirable? Have you found it so?"

His brows contracted at the last question, even while his mouth curved
cynically. "Some people find it so," he said.

"But you?" she said, and there was almost accusation in her voice, "Have
the gods been kind to you? Or have they thrown you the dregs--just the
dregs?"

The passionate note in the words, subdued though it was, was not to be
mistaken. It stirred him oddly, making him see her for the first time as
a woman rather than as the fantastic being, half-elf, half-child, whom
he had wrested from the very jaws of Death against her will. He leaned
slowly forward, marking the deep, deep shadows about her eyes, the vivid
red of her lips.

"What do you know about the dregs?" he said.

She beat her hands with a small, fierce movement on his knees, mutely
refusing to answer.

"Ah, well," he said, "I don't know why I should answer either. But I
will. Yes, I've had dregs--dregs--and nothing but dregs for the last
fifteen years."

He spoke with a bitterness that he scarcely attempted to restrain, and
the girl at his feet nodded--a wise little feminine nod.

"I knew you had. It comes harder to a man, doesn't it?"

"I don't know why it should," said Merryon, moodily.

"I do," said the Dragon-Fly. "It's because men were made to boss
creation. See? You're one of the bosses, you are. You've been led to
expect a lot, and because you haven't had it you feel you've been
cheated. Life is like that. It's just a thing that mocks at you. I
know."

She nodded again, and an odd, will-o'-the-wisp smile flitted over her
face.

"You seem to know--something of life," the man said.

She uttered a queer choking laugh. "Life is a big, big swindle," she
said. "The only happy people in the world are those who haven't found it
out. But you--you say there are other things in life besides suffering.
How did you know that if--if you've never had anything but dregs?"

"Ah!" Merryon said. "You have me there."

He was still looking full into those shadowy eyes with a curio