ile, then added, "But to be honest, I am not sure that I
congratulate you."

"Why not, Bickley?"

"Not for the reason that you may suspect, Arbuthnot, I mean not because
you have won where we have lost, as it was only to be expected that you
would do, but on account of something totally different. I told you
a while ago and repetition is useless and painful. I need only add
therefore that since then my conviction has strengthened and I am
sure, sorry as I am to say it, that in this matter you must prepare for
disappointment and calamity. That woman, if woman she really is, will
never be the wife of mortal man. Now be angry with me if you like, or
laugh as you have the right to do, seeing that like Bastin and yourself,
I also asked her to marry me, but something makes me speak what I
believe to be the truth."

"Like Cassandra," I suggested.

"Yes, like Cassandra who was not a popular person." At first I was
inclined to resent Bickley's words--who would not have been in the
circumstances? Then of a sudden there rushed in upon my mind the
conviction that he spoke the truth. In this world Yva was not for me or
any man. Moreover she knew it, the knowledge peeped out of every word
she spoke in our passionate love scene by the lake. She was aware, and
subconsciously I was aware, that we were plighting our troth, not for
time but for eternity. With time we had little left to do; not for long
would she wear the ring I gave her on that holy night.

Even Bastin, whose perceptions normally were not acute, felt that the
situation was strained and awkward and broke in with a curious air of
forced satisfaction:

"It's uncommonly lucky for you, old boy, that you happen to have
a clergyman in your party, as I shall be able to marry you in a
respectable fashion. Of course I can't say that the Glittering Lady is
as yet absolutely converted to our faith, but I am certain that she
has absorbed enough of its principles to justify me in uniting her in
Christian wedlock."

"Yes," I answered, "she has absorbed its principles; she told me as
much herself. Sacrifice, for instance," and as I spoke the word my eyes
filled with tears.

"Sacrifice!" broke in Bickley with an angry snort, for he needed a vent
to his mental disturbance. "Rubbish. Why should every religion demand
sacrifice as savages do? By it alone they stand condemned."

"Because as I think, sacrifice is the law of life, at least of all life
that is worth the living," I ans