illions, to think of things
in exactly one way." He who had once been "Gargoyle" looked piercingly
into the eyes of this one being to whom at least he was not afraid to
speak.

"Anything you or I might guess outside of what other people might
accept," the boy reminded her, austerely, "could be called by just one
unpleasant name." He regarded the face turned to his, recognizing the
hunger in it, with a mature and pitying candor, concluding: "After
to-day we must never speak of these things. I shall never dare, you must
never dare--and so--" He who had once been "Gargoyle" suddenly dropped
his head forward on his breast, muttering--"and so, that is all."

Evelyn Strang rose. She stood tall and imperious in the waning afternoon
light. She was bereaved mother, anguished wife; she was a dreamer driven
out of the temple of the dream, and what she had to do was desperate.
Her voice came hard and resolute.

"It is _not_ all," the woman doggedly insisted. The voiceless woe of one
who had lost a comrade by death was on her. In her eyes was fever let
loose, a sob, like one of a flock of imprisoned wild birds fluttered out
from the cage of years. "Oh no--no!" the woman pleaded, more as if to
some hidden power of negation than to the boy before her--"Oh no--no,
this _cannot_ be all, not for me! The world must never be told--it could
not understand; but _I_ must know, I _must_ know." She took desperate
steps back and forth.

"John Berber, if there is anything in your memory, your knowledge; even
if it is only that you have _imagined_ things--if they are so beautiful
or so terrible that you can never speak of them--for fear--for fear no
one would understand, you might, you might, even then, tell me--Do you
not hear? You might tell _me_. I authorize it, I command it."

The woman standing in the autumn gardens clenched her hands. She looked
round her into the clear air at the dense green and gold sunshine
filtering through the colored trees, the softly spread patens of the
cosmos, the vivid oriflammes of the chrysanthemums. Her voice was
anguished, as if they two stood at a secret door of which Berber alone
had the key, which for some reason he refused to use.

"I--of all the world," her whisper insisted. "If you might never speak
again--I should understand."

Berber, his face grown now quite ashen, looked at her. Something in her
expression seemed to transfix and bind him. Suddenly shutting his teeth
together, he stood up, his