on to say
that while I saw danger I saw, also, succour--rescue--safety."

"Safety? Rescue?" echoed John Ames, in almost an awed tone, but one
that was full of a great thankfulness and relief. "Ah, well, my awful
anxiety was deserved. Forgive me the interruption."

Even then it did not occur to him, the level-headed, the thinking, the
judicious, that here was a man--a strange one certainly--who had just
told him a cock-and-bull story about events he could not possibly know,
with the result of driving him perfectly frantic with anxiety and a
sense of his own helplessness. Why not? Because the narrative had been
unfolded with a knowledge stamped upon the narrator's countenance that
was as undeniable as the presence of the narrator himself. Strange to
say, not for a moment did it occur to him to question it.

He looked at the seer; a steadfast, penetrating, earnest glance. The
face was a refined one; handsome, clear-cut, furrowing somewhat with age
and hardness; but it was the face of one who had renounced all--hence
its power; of one who, for some reason or other, was a bitter hater of
his species, yet which as surely bore traces of a great overwhelming
sorrow, capabilities of a vast and selfless love. Who was this strange
being? What his tragic past? John Ames, thus striving to penetrate it,
felt all his repulsion for the other melt away into a warm, indefinable
sense of sympathy. Then he replied--

"In using the expression `wrapped up in,' you have used the right one.
If harm were to befall her I should feel that life had no more value."

"Then how will you face the--parting of the ways?"

The question chilled upon its hearer. Was it a prophecy?

"The parting of the ways?" he echoed slowly, comprehending the other's
meaning. "Why should there be any parting?"

"Because it is the way of life."

And with the harsh, jeering, mirthless laugh which accompanied the
cynicism, the stranger's countenance became once more transformed. The
stare of hate and repulsion came into it again, and he turned away. But
in the mind of his hearer there arose a vision of that last farewell,
and he felt reassured--yet not. Coming from any other, he would have
laughed at the utterance as a mere cynical commonplace, but from this
one it impressed him as a dire prophecy.

"There will come a time when you will look back upon these rough
wanderings of yours--the two of you--as a dream of Paradise, John Ames.
Hourly danger;