ghing and ran in again.

Lawford stooped forward on his chair with a groan. 'You see,' he said,
'the whole world mocks me. You say "this evening"; need it be, must it
be this evening? If you only knew how far they have driven me. If you
only knew what we should only detest each other for saying and
for listening to. The whole thing's dulled and staled. Who wants
a changeling? Who wants a painted bird? Who does not loathe the
converted?--and I'm converted to Sabathier's God. Should we be sitting
here talking like this if it were not so? I can't, I can't go back.'

She rose and stood with her hand pressed over her mouth, watching him.

'Won't you understand?' he continued. 'I am an outcast--a felon caught
red-handed, come in the flesh to a hideous and righteous judgment. I
hear myself saying all these things; and yet, Grisel, I do, I do love
you with all the dull best I ever had. Not now, then; I don't ask new
even. I can, I would begin again. God knows my face has changed enough
even as it is. Think of me as that poor wandering ghost of yours; how
easily I could hide away--in your memory; and just wait, wait for you.
In time even this wild futile madness too would fade away. Then I could
come back. May I try?'

'I can't answer you. I can't reason. Only, still, I do know, talk, put
off, forget as I may, must is must. Right and wrong, who knows what
THEY mean, except that one's to be done and one's to be forsworn;
or--forgive, my friend, the truest thing I ever said--or else we lose
the savour of both. Oh, then, and I know, too, you'd weary of me. I know
you, Monsieur Nicholas, better than you can ever know yourself, though
you have risen from your grave. You follow a dream, no voice or face or
flesh and blood; and not to do what the one old raven within you cries
you must, would be in time to hate the very sound of my footsteps. You
shall go back, poor turncoat, and face the clearness, the utterly more
difficult, bald, and heartless clearness, as together we faced the dark.
Life is a little while. And though I have no words to tell what always
are and must be foolish reasons because they are not reasons at all but
ghosts of memory, I know in my heart that to face the worst is your only
hope of peace. Should I have staked so much on your finding that, and
now throw up the game? Don't let us talk any more. I'll walk half
the way, perhaps. Perhaps I will walk all the way. I think my brother
guesses--at least MY madness. I