past, in the name of those days when he could see
nothing, think of nothing, desire nothing--but her embrace.

He took her suddenly in his arms, and she clasped her hands round his
neck with a low cry of joy and surprise. He took her in his arms and
waited for the transport, for the madness, for the sensations remembered
and lost; and while she sobbed gently on his breast he held her and felt
cold, sick, tired, exasperated with his failure--and ended by cursing
himself. She clung to him trembling with the intensity of her
happiness and her love. He heard her whispering--her face hidden on his
shoulder--of past sorrow, of coming joy that would last for ever; of her
unshaken belief in his love. She had always believed. Always! Even while
his face was turned away from her in the dark days while his mind was
wandering in his own land, amongst his own people. But it would never
wander away from her any more, now it had come back. He would forget the
cold faces and the hard hearts of the cruel people. What was there to
remember? Nothing? Was it not so? . . .

He listened hopelessly to the faint murmur. He stood still and rigid,
pressing her mechanically to his breast while he thought that there was
nothing for him in the world. He was robbed of everything; robbed of
his passion, of his liberty, of forgetfulness, of consolation. She, wild
with delight, whispered on rapidly, of love, of light, of peace, of
long years. . . . He looked drearily above her head down into the deeper
gloom of the courtyard. And, all at once, it seemed to him that he was
peering into a sombre hollow, into a deep black hole full of decay
and of whitened bones; into an immense and inevitable grave full of
corruption where sooner or later he must, unavoidably, fall.

In the morning he came out early, and stood for a time in the doorway,
listening to the light breathing behind him--in the house. She slept. He
had not closed his eyes through all that night. He stood swaying--then
leaned against the lintel of the door. He was exhausted, done up;
fancied himself hardly alive. He had a disgusted horror of himself that,
as he looked at the level sea of mist at his feet, faded quickly into
dull indifference. It was like a sudden and final decrepitude of his
senses, of his body, of his thoughts. Standing on the high platform, he
looked over the expanse of low night fog above which, here and there,
stood out the feathery heads of tall bamboo clumps and the roun