trancing, if profitless
past--Lilith could no longer quite keep herself in hand. The tears
welled forth, falling upon the metal box itself--hallowing, as it were,
the sweet charm of its saving power.

"Your love had power to save one life, you see," he went on in a cold,
even voice, intended to strengthen him against himself. "But look,
now--see those marks on the lid, just discernible? Now--listen."

And Lilith did listen; and at the description of the awful rock prison,
with its skeleton bones, the long hours of helpless suspense and
despair--and the final struggle in the ghastly moonlight; the struggle
for life with the appalling monster that tenanted it, her eyes dilated
with horror, and with pallid face and gasping lips she begged him not to
go on, so great a hold did the incident take upon her imagination, even
there, in the blaze of the broad midday sunlight.

"I have done now," he said. "Well, Lilith--you see what that token of
your love has rescued me from. It was given as an amulet or charm, and
right well has it fulfilled its purpose. But--to what end?"

"Did you--did you come back with what you went for," she broke forth at
last, as with an effort.

"Yes. Therein, too, you proved yourself a true prophet. And now tell me
something about yourself."

"Were you--angry with me when you heard what I had done, Laurence?" she
said, raising her eyes full to his.

"Angry? No. Why should I be? Your life is your own, though, as a rule,
sacrificing ones' self to save somebody else, as your aunt rather gave
me to understand was the case here, is lamentably apt to turn out a case
of throwing away one's life with both hands. It is too much like cutting
one's own throat to save somebody else from being hanged."

"And is that your way of wishing me well, Laurence?" she said
reproachfully.

"No. I wish you nothing but well. It would be futile to say 'happiness,'
I suppose."

"The happiness of doing one's duty is a hard kind of happiness, after
all," she said, with a sad little smile.

"Yes. An excellent copybook maxim, but for all purposes of real
life--bosh. Am I not in my own person a living instance to that effect?
As soon as I pitched 'duty' to the dogs, why then, and only then, did I
begin to travel in the contrary direction to those sagacious animals
myself--which, of course, is simply appalling morality, but--it's life.
Well, child, make the best of your life, and prove a shining exception
to the dismal ru