the colors of flesh, and was moving its toes in time
to his playing; and so knew that the entire body was informed with life.

He cast down the flageolet, and touched the breast of the image with the
ancient formal gestures of the old Tuyla mystery, and he sealed the
mouth of the image with a kiss, so that the spirit of Niafer was
imprisoned in the image which Manuel had made. Under his lips the lips
which had been Misery's cried, "I love." And Niafer rose, a living girl
just such as Manuel had remembered for more than a whole year: but with
that kiss all memories of paradise and all the traits of angelhood
departed from her.

"Well, well, dear snip," said Manuel, the first thing of all, "now it is
certainly a comfort to have you back again."

Niafer, even in the rapture of her happiness, found this an
unimpassioned greeting from one who had gone to unusual lengths to
recover her companionship. Staring, she saw that Manuel had all the
marks of a man in middle life, and spoke as became appearances. For it
was at the price of his youth that Manuel had recovered the woman whom
his youth desired: and Misery had subtly evened matters by awarding an
aging man the woman for whose sake a lad had fearlessly served Misery.
There was no longer any such lad, for the conquered had destroyed the
conqueror.

Then, after a moment's consideration of this tall gray stranger, Niafer
also looked graver and older. Niafer asked for a mirror: and Manuel had
none.

"Now but certainly I must know at once just how faithfully you have
remembered me," says Niafer.

He led the way into the naked and desolate November forest, and they
came to the steel-colored Wolflake hard by the gray hut: and Niafer
found she was limping, for Manuel had not got her legs quite right, so
that for the rest of her second life she was lame. Then Niafer gazed for
a minute, or it might be for two minutes, at her reflection in the deep
cold waters of the Wolflake.

"Is this as near as you have come to remembering me, my dearest!" she
said, dejectedly, as she looked down at Manuel's notion of her face. For
the appearance which Niafer now wore she found to be very little like
that which Niafer remembered as having been hers, in days wherein she
had been tolerably familiar with the Lady Gisele's mirrors; and it was a
grief to Niafer to see how utterly the dearest dead go out of mind in no
long while.

"I have forgotten not one line or curve of your features," says