ed her and
listened to her as he watched and listened to no other person, with an
attention as though there were something unique in her most trivial
utterance, and with a sadness as though she symbolized all the
allurements of life, from which he must presently depart. And at last
it became evident that he had found in this relationship a charm more
piercing than if their association could have had a different outcome.
For him, no doubt, their hours together were at last suffused with the
mournful glory that concludes a sunset--more valuable, to the
romantically imaginative soul, than the flaming vigor of mid-day. To
have found her, to realize that she must remain as an angel hovering
high over an inferno, to perceive that he must pass from this radiance
into the shades, filled him with a gloomy ecstasy and a pathetic
gratitude.

A time came when his armor of misanthropy crumbled away; and in the
shadowy alcove of Brantome's living room he confessed to her.

He told her that she had covered the page on which Finis was already
written with a glow of gold, as though, at the last moment, a shutter
opening on a paradise had swung ajar.

He declared that she could not imagine the blackness that had
surrounded him at her first appearance. His heart had been cased in
ice; he had hated every one. Then she had come holding beauty in one
hand and tenderness in the other. Although he believed in nothing but
a mechanistic universe, he had thought of those figures, half woman and
half goddess, that descend from another plane, in the old mystical
tales, to lure one back to faith with a celestial smile. He protested
that he was not far from regaining that deep-rooted belief of his race,
of which Brantome had spoken--the idea that woman might be angelic.

He even said:

"Suppose your kindness were the reflection of something still more
lovely, which we cannot see with these eyes?"

He went on to other, similar rhapsodies, such phrases as bubble from
the lips of those who, in the extremity of despair, exhausted by their
sufferings, become, with a sigh of relief, like little children. Amid
the shadows of the alcove his eyes shone; and even his body, helpless
in the wheel chair, quivered as if with new life.

"If you had appeared sooner! The music I might have written! But
then, everything would be different. There would have been no reason
for your pity."

On the hearth the log that was nearly consumed fell with a sh