ut the fire with his hands. He dressed the burn and bandaged
it with cool, professional dexterity, trembling a little, taking pain
from her pain.

"Why didn't you call out?" he said.

"I didn't want you to know."

"You'd have been burnt sooner?"

He had slung her arm in a scarf; and, as he tied the knot on her
shoulder, his face was brought close to hers. She turned her head and
her eyes met his.

"I'd have let my whole body burn," she whispered, "sooner than
hurt--your hands."

His hands dropped from her shoulder. He thrust them into his pockets out
of her sight.

She followed him into the outer room, struggling against her sense of
his recoil.

"If you had a body like mine," she said, "you'd be glad to get rid of it
on any terms." She wondered if he saw through her pitiable attempt to
call back the words that had flung themselves upon him.

"There's nothing wrong with your body," he answered coldly.

"No, Owen, nothing; except that I'm tired of it."

"The tiredness will pass. Is that burn hurting you?"

"Not yet. I don't mind it."

He stooped and picked up the book he had dropped in his rush to her. She
saw now that he looked at it as a man looks at the thing he loves, and
that his hands as they touched it shook with a nervous tremor.

She came and stood by him, without speaking, and he turned and faced
her.

"Nina," he said, "why did you write this terrible book? If you hadn't
written it, I should never have been here."

"That's why, then, isn't it?"

"I suppose so. You _had_ to write it, and I _had_ to come."

"Yes, Owen," she said gently.

"You brought me here," he said.

"I can't understand it."

"Can't understand what?"

"The fascination I had for you."

He closed the book and laid it down.

"You were my youth, Nina."

He held out his hands toward her, the hands that he had just now
withdrawn. She would have taken them, but for the look in his eyes that
forbade her to touch him.

"My youth was dumb. It couldn't make itself immortal. You did that for
it."

"But the people of those tales are not a bit like you."

"No. They _are_ me. They are what I was. Your people are not people,
they are not characters, they are incarnate passions."

"So like you," she said, with a resurgence of her irony.

"You don't know me. You don't remember me. But I know and remember you.
You asked me once how I knew. That's how. I've been where you were."

He paused.

"If my youth were here, Nin