beautiful objects and
inspirations, has suddenly come into my life."

Ellen stared at him blankly.

"Have you gone dotty, Alfred?" she murmured.

He shook his head.

"No," he replied gently. "If anything, I am a great deal wiser than
ever I was before. Only there are penalties. It is about these
penalties that I want to talk to you."

Ellen's arms became crooked and her knuckles were screwed into her
waist. It was an unfortunate and inherited habit of hers, which
reappeared frequently under circumstances of emotion.

"Will you answer this one question?" she insisted. "Why has all this
made you leave your wife and home? Tell me that, will you?"

Burton went for his last fence gallantly.

"Because our life here is hideous," he declared, "and I can't stand it.
Our house is ugly, our furniture impossible, the neighborhood atrocious.
Your clothes are all wrong and so are Alfred's. I could not possibly
live here any longer in the way we have been living up to now."

Ellen gave a little gasp.

"Then what are you doing here now?"

"I cannot come back to you," he continued. "I want you to come to me.
This is the part of my story which will sound miraculous, if not
ridiculous to you, but you will have to take my word for it. Try and
remember for a moment that there are things in life beyond the pale of
our knowledge, things which we must accept simply by faith. The change
which came to me came through eating a sort of bean, grown by an old man
who was brought home from Asia by a great scholar. These beans are
supposed to contain the germ of Truth. I have 'two here--one for you
and one for Alfred. I want you to eat them, and afterwards, what I hope
and believe is that we shall see things more the same way and come
together again."

He produced the beans from his pocket and Ellen took a step forward.
The shortness of her breath and the glitter in her eyes should have
warned him. The greatness of his subject, however, had carried him
away. His attention was riveted upon the beans lying in the palm of his
hand. He looked at them almost reverently.

"Are those the things?" she demanded.

He held them out towards her. A faint pang of regret stirred his heart.
For a single second the picture of a beautiful garden glowed and faded
before his eyes. A wave of delicious perfume came and went. The
girl--slim, white-clad--looked at him a little wistfully with her sad
blue eyes. It was a mirage which passed, a mirage or some