n
may have taken a wrong twist. And when he finds his way back to the
straight road, they say he has 'reformed.' He hasn't. He's only struck
his own natural gait again. As he was bound to. And _my_ kind of man
sometimes takes a momentary twist in the _right_ direction. Then people
say _he_ has reformed. And they are just as much mistaken as they were
in the other case. For, water won't run uphill after the first pressure
is withdrawn."

"But in the fires of affliction----"

"The fires of affliction," he retorted sadly, "have burned away the
dross from the pure gold of many a soul, I suppose. But no fires were
ever heated that could burn dross fiercely enough to turn it into gold.
Yet----"

He hesitated, then said, without daring to look at her:

"There's one thing I do want you to know, Kitty. Whatever I was and am,
and whatever shams went to make up my daily life here--you know my love
for _you_ was true and absolute and that I loved and _love_ you more
than the whole world besides?"

"Yes," she returned, unembarrassed. "I believe that, Frederik. In part.
You loved me as much as you could love any one. But----"

"Why must there be a 'but'?" he entreated.

"But," she went on with the relentlessness of the Young, "not as much as
you loved yourself."

"More! Ten thousand times more!" he declared vehemently.

"No," she contradicted. "For you didn't love me enough to give me up
when you knew I cared for another man. The Perfect Love would have----"

"The 'perfect love'!" he scoffed. "I have read of it. But I have yet to
see it."

"You cannot see it," she replied, "for the same reason I could not see
Oom Peter when he was fighting my battle here last night. My eyes were
blinded by the world I live in. Perfect love is everywhere. It is within
and about us. But----"

"But I would be too ignoble to recognise it if I chanced upon it?
Perhaps. But why strip me of my last illusion? In the torment of my
self-abasement this morning, I have clung to that one comfort: That I
love you with a love which a truly worthless man _could_ not feel. And
now----"

"_Don't_ misunderstand me," she begged, half-tearfully. "I----"

"You have shown me the truth. And I ought to thank you for it. Perhaps
some day I can. If I still remember it then. Good-bye, dear. I shan't be
here again. I've--I've left you a little present. Dr. McPherson will
give it to you."

"But I _can't_ take----"

"Oh, yes, you can. It isn't really from me.