here is such a thing. I want you and you are all that I want in the
world. I want you, Ygerne, in a way I did not know a man could want
anything. Through you I have come to look at all creation in a new
way; it seems to me that there is a God. Am I talking like a madman
again? Or just like a fool? . . . I feel sometimes that I love you
because I was created for the sole purpose of loving you; that you must
love me for the same reason. There are other times when that doesn't
seem possible, when I can't conceive of your coming to me as I come to
you. But in the end I had to know, Ygerne. Am I a fool? Or do you
love me?"

He had made no movement toward her. He stood very still at the door.
He had striven with his emotion so that outwardly he mastered it. His
voice had remained calm and very steady.

"You said a moment ago," Ygerne answered him, and her voice too was
cool almost to the point of indifference, "that you had been a brute to
me. Knowing you as I do, is it likely that I should have come to love
you?"

"No," he said.

"Then why do you come to me this way, now?"

"Because I had to come. Because it is not always the likely thing
which happens. Because I have thought that we were made for each
other, you and I. Because I must know."

He waited for her answer, an answer which he feared she had already
given him. He hungered for her so that he could only wonder how he
could hold himself back from taking her up into his arms. But he
mastered himself so that the girl could not guess how hard he strove
for the mastery.

"Is love a little thing or a big thing?" she said suddenly.

"A big thing. I think it is the biggest thing in the world."

"And still, believing that, you think that I am a girl to let you treat
me as you have treated me since we first saw each other, and then to
come to you when you decide to crook your finger to me, giving you my
love? Is that it? Is that why you are here to-night?"

"Is that my answer, Ygerne?" he said, his tone more stern than it had
yet been.

"That is no answer at all, Mr. Drennen. It is a question."

His face grew a little white as he stared at her.

"I think, Ygerne, that I shall tell you good night now. And in the
morning, before you are up, I'll be gone. All my life I hope I shall
never see you again. And you can know that every day of it I'll be mad
to see you."

He bent his head to her, turning away, a dull agony in his heart. His
h