uffered a great deal," she said simply "You have lost
very much. You are no longer a boy. You are a man, now. You've
changed because you are a man. And it wasn't--well, it wasn't done
for--for any reward."

"No, maybe not. In some ways I don't think just the way I used to.
But the savage--the brute--in me is there just the same. I don't
want to do what is right. I don't want to know what is right. I
only want to do what I want to do. What I covet, I covet. What I
love, I love. What I want, I want. That is all. And yet, just a
minute ago you were telling me you would be a friend! Not to a man
like that! It wouldn't be right."

She made no answer. The faces of both were now turned toward the
gray dawn beyond the hills. It was some moments before once more
he turned to her.

"But you and I--just you and I, together, thinking the way we both
do, seeing what we both see--the splendid sadness and the glory of
living and loving--and being what we both are! Oh, it all comes
back to me, I tell you; and I say I have not changed. I shall
always call your hair 'dark as the night of disunion and
separation'--isn't that what the oriental poet called it?--and your
face, to me, always, always, always, will be 'fair as the days of
union and delight.' No you've not changed. You're still just a
tall flower, in the blades of grass--that are cut down. But
wasted! What is in my mind now, when maybe it ought not to be
here, is just this: What couldn't you and I have done together?
Ah! Nothing could have stopped us!"

"What could we not have done?" she repeated slowly. "I've done so
little--in the world--alone."

Something in her tone caught his ear, his senses, overstrung,
vibrating in exquisite susceptibility, capable almost of hearing
thought that dared not be thought. He turned his blackened face,
bent toward her, looking into her face with an intensity which
almost annihilated the human limitations of flesh and blood. It
was as though his soul heard something in hers, and turned to
answer it, to demand its repetition.

"Did you say, _could_ have done?" he demanded. "Tell me, did you
say that?"

She did not answer, and he went on. "Listen!" he said in his old,
imperious way. "What couldn't we do together an the world, for the
world--even now?"

For a long time there was silence. At last, a light hand fell upon
the brown and blistered one which he had thrust out.

"Do you think so?" he heard a gent