"I have never wilfully ruined any one's life."

"You have ruined mine."

"Wilfully?"

"How else shall I explain your conduct?"

"I warned you."

"Warning, indeed! The warning that the snake gives to the sparrow
helpless under its gaze."

"Ah, but who tells you that the snake is to blame? Is it not rather the
occult power that prescribes with blood on brazen scroll the law of our
being?"

"This is no solace to the sparrow. But whatever may be said, let us drop
the past. Let us consider the present. I beg of you, leave this boy--let
him develop without your attempting to stifle the life in him or
impressing upon it the stamp of your alien mind."

"Ethel," he protested, "you are unjust. If you knew--" Then an idea
seemed to take hold of him. He looked at her curiously.

"What if I knew?" she asked.

"You shall know," he said, simply. "Are you strong?"

"Strong to withstand anything at your hand. There is nothing that you
can give me, nothing that you can take away."

"No," he remarked, "nothing. Yes, you have changed. Still, when I look
upon you, the ghosts of the past seem to rise like live things."

"We both have changed. We meet now upon equal grounds. You are no
longer the idol I made of you."

"Don't you think that to the idol this might be a relief, not a
humiliation? It is a terrible torture to sit in state with lips
eternally shut. Sometimes there comes over the most reticent of us a
desire to break through the eternal loneliness that surrounds the soul.
It is this feeling that prompts madmen to tear off their clothes and
exhibit their nakedness in the market-place. It's madness on my part, or
a whim, or I don't know what; but it pleases me that you should know the
truth."

"You promised me long ago that I should."

"To-day I will redeem my promise, and I will tell you another thing that
you will find hard to believe."

"And that is?"

"That I loved you."

Ethel smiled a little sceptically. "You have loved often."

"No," he replied. "Loved, seriously loved, I have, only once."

XX

They were sitting in a little Italian restaurant where they had often,
in the old days, lingered late into the night over a glass of Lacrimae
Christi. But no pale ghost of the past rose from the wine. Only a
wriggling something, with serpent eyes, that sent cold shivers down her
spine and held her speechless and entranced.

When their order had been filled and the waiter had posted himself at a
res