ll bright things--they will
fall across the children. Willy, we cannot move!"

"I see . . ."

"Ah?" She craned forward and almost touched his arm again.

"Annie, it comes to me now--I see for the first time how happy we might
have been. How came we two to kill love?"

The woman gave a cry, almost of joy. Her fingers touched his sleeve
now. "We have not killed love. We--I--had stunned him: but (O, I see!)
he has picked up his weapons again and is fighting. He is bewildered
here, in this great light, and he fights at random . . . fights to make
you strong and me weak, you weak and me strong. We can never be one
again, never. One of us must fall, must be beaten . . .he does not see
this, but O, Willy, he fights . . . he fights!"

"He shall fight for you. Annie, come home!"

"No, no--for you--and the children!"

"Come!"

"Think of the people!" She held him off, shaking her head, but her eyes
were wistful, intent upon his. "You have lived it down. . . . It would
all begin again. Look at me . . . think of the talk . . ."

"Let them say what they choose. . . I wonder what they would say . . ."

The Policeman stepped forward and across the road-way. He had heard
nothing, and completely misunderstood all he had seen.

"Come, you must move on there, you two!" he commanded harshly.

Suddenly, as he said it, the light above was extinguished.

"Hullo!" He paused, half-way across. "Twelve o'clock already!
Then what's taken my watch?"

A pair of feet tip-toed away in the darkness for a few yards, then broke
into a nervous run.

As a matter of fact it still wanted five minutes of midnight. And while
the Policeman fumbled for his watch and slipped back the slide of his
lantern, the white flame leaped back into the blind eye above and blazed
down as fiercely as ever.

"Something wrong with the connection, I suppose," said the Policeman,
glancing up and then down at the solitary figure left standing under the
lamp.

"Why, hullo! . . ." said he again.

But which was it?--the man or the woman?

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD FIRES AND PROFITABLE GHOSTS***

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