ill I pluck a rose again; I will let it live where
the gardener plants it. I thought it pretty to pluck them and smell
them, and watch the leaves all fall; I did not know I killed them!
Sometimes I think that people do not know when they kill roses. Now tell
another tale, I pray thee! Tell that tale of when thou and I lived long
and long ago, and of how we met in that other world which is gone. That
tale I love the best of all."

"Of how we met--" Nicanor repeated absently. Again his mood had changed,
as always in her presence. When away from her, with but the memory of
her face, her innocent wiles, her passiveness under his caresses,
passion had its way with him, blinding him, rendering him desperate,
careless of consequences. But when with her, that very innocence of hers
wrought its own spell upon him, taming and stilling him with an awe
which he but half understood. Curiously, this chastened mood left him
invariably sullen and surly, after the manner of a beast which sulks at
having missed its kill.

"Of how we met?" he said again. "So then. Once thou and I lived very
long ago. Ages and ages ago it was, when the world was young, and only
the moon and the stars were old. None walked upon the earth save we two,
and the world and its beauty was for us alone. Dusky forests covered all
the land, where strange birds sang and great flowers grew. Wild beasts
roamed these forests with us, but we walked among them unafraid, for
they knew not that they could harm us. Beneath the sunken light of old
scarred moons we wandered hand in hand; and day by day I told that tale
to thee I dare not tell thee now, and there was none to hinder me.

"Canst dream of a world all happiness, my lady, a world without shadow
of sorrow or cloud of care, with nothing but happy sunshine and the
songs of birds? That world was our world. And in it we were free, we
two, free to wander where we would, free as the winds that called us.
Who may know freedom as do those who walk in chains? We knew not then
the measure of this our freedom, for we had known no thraldom of flesh
nor spirit. Therefore the high gods decreed that we should be brought to
know the greatness of their gift, by losing it; that in our lives to
come we should be bound, and bound remain until we knew what we had
lost. Thy bonds sit upon thee lightly, yet in thine eyes I read that
they are there. And I--I am learning fast what freedom means. In the
shade of great trees which upheld the