lmain, worshipper of beauty as he was, had had a
surfeit of pretty faces. He was like the confectioner's boy who when
first engaged is allowed to eat all the cakes and sweets he likes, and
who eats so many in the first week, that ever after he wants only plain
bread-and-butter. YOU were Dal's bread-and-butter. I am sorry if you do
not like the simile."

Jane smiled. "I do like the simile," she said.

"Ah, but you were far more than this, my dear girl. You were his ideal
of womanhood. He believed in your strength and tenderness, your
graciousness and truth. You shattered this ideal; you failed this faith
in you. His fanciful, artistic, eclectic nature with all its unused
possibilities of faithful and passionate devotion, had found its haven
in your love; and in twelve hours you turned it adrift. Jane--it was a
crime. The magnificent strength of the fellow is shown by the way he
took it. His progress in his art was not arrested. All his best work
has been done since. He has made no bad mad marriage, in mockery of his
own pain; and no grand loveless one, to spite you. He might have done
both--I mean either. And when I realise that the poor fellow I was with
yesterday--making such a brave fight in the dark, and turning his head
on the pillow to say with a gleam of hope on his drawn face: `Where
Thou art Guide, no ill can come'--had already been put through all this
by you--Jane, if you were a man, I'd horsewhip you!" said the doctor.

Jane squared her shoulders and lifted her head with more of her old
spirit than she had yet shown.

"You have lashed me well, Boy," she said, "as only words spoken in
faithful indignation can lash. And I feel the better for the pain.--
And now I think I ought to tell you that while I was on the top of the
Great Pyramid I suddenly saw the matter from a different standpoint.
You remember that view, with its sharp line of demarcation? On one side
the river, and verdure, vegetation, fruitfulness, a veritable 'garden
enclosed'; on the other, vast space as far as the eye could reach;
golden liberty, away to the horizon, but no sign of vegetation, no hope
of cultivation, just barren, arid, loneliness. I felt this was an exact
picture of my life as I live it now. Garth's love, flowing through it,
as the river, could have made it a veritable 'garden of the Lord.' It
would have meant less liberty, but it would also have meant no
loneliness. And, after all, the liberty to live for self alone becomes