he
moonlight, to this spot?

"The rest you know.

"It is not you who need pity!

"You have the pain of an imperishable loyalty in your soul. It is like
a glory in your face, in spite of all you have suffered. As I look at
you, it seems but yesterday that all was well between us.

"I lost much in losing you.

"Nor am I sure that you were right to go! But that was for your own
nature to decide. In your place I should have fought Fate, I expected
you to do it.

"I loved her first, because she satisfied my eyes. I loved her the
more that she was denied to me! Yet I knew always that this love was
not in me what it was in you. With me it was, like many other emotions
of a similar sort--a sentiment that would pass. I tried to think
otherwise. But I had awakened her heart, and you, to whom the law had
given her, were gone!

"I waited long for your return, or for some sign.

"You neither came nor spoke.

"I argued that something must be done. I owed it to her to offer her
my protection.

"I came back here. I met her on this very spot. I said to her, 'You
are alone in the world--your mother has married--she has other
children. I have saddened your life with my love. Let me at least help
to cheer it again. You need affection. Here it is--in my arms!'

"And, while I waited for her answer, I prayed with all my soul that
she might deny me.

"God bless her! She did! I turned away from her with a glad heart, and
in that heart I enshrined this woman, who, loving me, had denied me.
There I set up her image, pure and inviolate. Two long years I stayed
away from her, and as I worked, I worshipped her, and out of that
worship I wrought a great thing.

"With time, however, her real image grew faint within me. Other
emotions, other experiences seemed to blur and dim it. In spite of
myself, I returned here. Once more I stood on this spot, within the
gaze of her deep eyes. I began to believe that a love everlasting, all
enduring, had been given me! But still it was passion that pleaded for
possession, and still it was self-knowledge that looked on in fear.

"Passion bade me plead: 'You love me! You need me! Come to me!' And
fear kept my heart still, in dread of her consent.

"But she looked up into my face with eyes that seemed to widen under
mine, and simply whispered, 'My mother.' The heart that knew and
understood now all that sad history seemed to feel that her act might
re-open the mother's old wound; that the verdict