cruel, as you used to be."
She laughed, and the arms around him tightened for a moment. "And now
you are kind and tender and great, as once he was. It is as if the good
God had taken away my lover from me to give to me a father."

"Listen to me, Christina," he said. "It is the soul that is the man, not
the body. Could you not love me for my new soul?"

"But I do love you," answered Christina, smiling through her tears.

"Could you as a husband?" The firelight fell upon her face. Nicholas,
holding it between his withered hands, looked into it long and hard; and
reading what he read there, laid it back against his breast and soothed
it with his withered hand.

"I was jesting, little one," he said. "Girls for boys, and old women for
old men. And so, in spite of all, you still love Jan?"

"I love him," answered Christina. "I cannot help it."

"And if he would, you would marry him, let his soul be what it may?"

"I love him," answered Christina. "I cannot help it."

Old Nicholas sat alone before the dying fire. Is it the soul or the body
that is the real man? The answer was not so simple as he had thought it.

"Christina loved Jan"--so Nicholas mumbled to the dying fire--"when
he had the soul of Jan. She loves him still, though he has the soul of
Nicholas Snyders. When I asked her if she could love me, it was terror
I read in her eyes, though Jan's soul is now in me; she divined it. It
must be the body that is the real Jan, the real Nicholas. If the soul
of Christina entered into the body of Dame Toelast, should I turn from
Christina, from her golden hair, her fathomless eyes, her asking lips,
to desire the shrivelled carcass of Dame Toelast? No; I should still
shudder at the thought of her. Yet when I had the soul of Nicholas
Snyders, I did not loathe her, while Christina was naught to me. It must
be with the soul that we love, else Jan would still love Christina and
I should be Miser Nick. Yet here am I loving Christina, using Nicholas
Snyders' brain and gold to thwart Nicholas Snyders' every scheme, doing
everything that I know will make him mad when he comes back into his own
body; while Jan cares no longer for Christina, would marry Dame Toelast
for her broad lands, her many mills. Clearly it is the soul that is the
real man. Then ought I not to be glad, thinking I am going back into my
own body, knowing that I shall wed Christina? But I am not glad; I am
very miserable. I shall not go with Jan's soul, I feel i