ing round me,
laughing and holding out their hands. They are like the children. They
need two to care for them. I want to talk about them to someone who
understands them and loves them, as I do. I want to feel they are dear
to someone else, as well as to myself: that I must work for them for her
sake, as well as for my own. I want someone to help me to bring them
up."

There were tears in his eyes. He brushed them angrily away. "Oh, I know
I ought to be ashamed of myself," he said. "It wasn't her fault. She
wasn't to know that a hot-blooded young chap of twenty hasn't all his
wits about him, any more than I was. If I had never met you, it wouldn't
have mattered. I'd have done my bit of good, and have stopped there,
content. With you beside me"--he looked away from her to where the
silent city peeped through its veil of night--"I might have left the
world better than I found it."

The blood had mounted to her face. She drew back into the shadow, beyond
the tiny sphere of light made by the little lamp.

"Men have accomplished great things without a woman's help," she said.

"Some men," he answered. "Artists and poets. They have the woman within
them. Men like myself--the mere fighter: we are incomplete in ourselves.
Male and female created He them. We are lost without our mate."

He was thinking only of himself. Had he no pity for her. So was she,
also, useless without her mate. Neither was she of those, here and
there, who can stand alone. Her task was that of the eternal woman: to
make a home: to cleanse the world of sin and sorrow, make it a kinder
dwelling-place for the children that should come. This man was her true
helpmeet. He would have been her weapon, her dear servant; and she could
have rewarded him as none other ever could. The lamplight fell upon his
ruddy face, his strong white hands resting on the flimsy table. He
belonged to an older order than her own. That suggestion about him of
something primitive, of something not yet altogether tamed. She felt
again that slight thrill of fear that so strangely excited her. A mist
seemed to be obscuring all things. He seemed to be coming towards her.
Only by keeping her eyes fixed on his moveless hands, still resting on
the table, could she convince herself that his arms were not closing
about her, that she was not being drawn nearer and nearer to him,
powerless to resist.

Suddenly, out of the mist, she heard voices. The waiter wa