uld you feel as you feel now?"

"No," I answered slowly, "I admit old age...."

"Or hopelessly disfigured--my face rendered hideous by burns or
loathsome with disease? You could not desire me then, I should not
expect it. Love is unchangeable, but passion is a flame that shivers
in every transient breeze. We can't help it. It _is_ so. As I look at
you now I love you for your strength and grace, above all for your
beautiful form. If you hobbled into the room, bent and lame, I should
love you still but not as I do now, quite, quite otherwise. And I was
disfigured, temporarily, I know, but it went on for months and months.
I was no longer your gay, glad spirit with the radiant wings. I was
broken, distorted, hideous."

"Don't tell me," I muttered; "I can't bear it." She put one arm round
my neck and her soft lips on my hair.

"It is over," she whispered. "Do not be sorry, do not reproach
yourself. It was so much better for you not to know, not to see it. It
would all have preyed upon you so from day to day. _I_ felt the long
waiting. It seemed the time would never pass, and each day and night I
felt so glad to know you were not there, to suffer with me, but away,
quite out of reach of it all."

"But suppose you had died ... without me."

"The chances were against that. And if I had, it would have still been
better that you should be away ... for you. I would have come to you
after death, really a spirit then, and lived ever after in your soul."

I put my arms round her, living, warm, beautiful, in the flesh.

"What a lonely, terrible year for you!" I said. "It never occurred to
me ... I never dreamed ... and I can't understand now...."

"You remember the night I came back from Lawton's place to you? ...
You were mad with jealous rage, and I am so little accustomed to
resist you.... Well, it was my punishment for even thinking I could
leave you.... At least, I have always accepted it as such."

"I can never, never forgive myself."

"I knew you would take it like that, and now you see I can make you
soon forget it. If you had felt like this for weeks and months it
would almost have killed you."

She played with my hair and her lips touched my eyebrows.

"Yes," she answered, looking back at me sadly and closely. "Are you
sorry?"

"No, I am not sorry," I answered savagely.

"I thought you would not be."

"Are you?"

She sighed.

"I hardly know. It was so like you, Trevor, such a very, very
beautiful b