r really wanted anything except to be with you!" But
her bliss in him had been too tightly strung by his sudden coming and by
his open speech of that concerning which they spoke as seldom as the
passionately religious speak of God, so for a little time she had to
weep. But presently she stretched out her hand and pressed back his
seeking mouth.

"Hush!" she said with a grave wildness. "We must not talk like this."

He lifted his face, which was convulsed with love and pain, and found
her stern as a priestess who defends her mystery from violation. Meekly
he let his arms fall from her body and turned away, resting his head on
his hand and staring at a blank wall.

She saw that she had hurt him. She drew close to him again, and murmured
lovingly, though still with defensive majesty: "Why should we talk of
it, my boy? It's all over now, and you're a made man. This contract
really does mean that, doesn't it?"

He answered, patting her hand to show that he submitted to her in
everything, "Oh, in the end it means illimitable power."

To give him pleasure she exchanged with him a brilliant and triumphant
glance, though at this moment she felt that her love for him concerned
itself less with ambition than she had ever supposed. Incredulously she
whispered to her harsh, sceptical mind that it almost seemed as if its
sphere were not among temporal things. But it gave her a real rapture to
perceive in his eyes the elder brother of the expression that had always
dwelt there in his childish days when he announced to her his
cricket-scores and his prizes; even so, she had thought then, the
adjutant of a banished leader might hand him down arrows to shoot on the
city that had exiled him. And indeed the success of their conspiracy had
been marvellous. In old times they had looked out of this house under
lowered and defiant brows, knowing there was none without who knew of
them who did not despise them. But now they could smile tenderly and
derisively out into this hushed moonlight that received the uncountable
and fatuously peaceful breaths of the sleepers who had been their
enemies and were to be their slaves. It was strange that at this of all
instants she should for the space of a heartbeat lose her sense of the
uniqueness of her fate and be confounded by amazement at the common lot
in which they two and the vanquished sleepers alike partook. Was it
possible that this could be? That this plethora of beings that coated
the carel