, at the risk of losing all. She bit her white lips
and turned her head away, and was silent.

"You are my best friend," the Wanderer repeated in his calm voice,
and every syllable pierced her like a glowing needle. "And does not
friendship give rights which ought to be used? If, as I think, Unorna,
you look upon me as an idler, as a worthless being, as a man without as
much as the shadow of a purpose in the world, it is but natural that you
should despise me a little, even though you may be very fond of me. Do
you not see that?"

Unorna stared at him with an odd expression for a moment.

"Yes--I am fond of you!" she exclaimed, almost harshly. Then she
laughed. He seemed not to notice her tone.

"I never knew what friendship was before," he went on. "Of course, as
I said, I had friends when I was little more than a boy, boys and young
men like myself, and our friendship came to this, that we laughed, and
feasted and hunted together, and sometimes even quarrelled, and caring
little, thought even less. But in those days there seemed to be nothing
between that and love, and love I never understood, that I can remember.
But friendship like ours, Unorna, was never dreamed of among us. Such
friendship as this, when I often think that I receive all and give
nothing in return."

Again Unorna laughed, so strangely that the sound of her own voice
startled her.

"Why do you laugh like that?" he asked.

"Because what you say is so unjust to yourself," she answered, nervously
and scarcely seeing him where he sat. "You seem to think it is all on
your side. And yet, I just told you that I was fond of you."

"I think it is a fondness greater than friendship that we feel for each
other," he said, presently, thrusting the probe of a new hope into the
tortured wound.

"Yes?" she spoke faintly, with averted face.

"Something more--a stronger tie, a closer bond. Unorna, do you believe
in the migration of the soul throughout ages, from one body to another?"

"Sometimes," she succeeded in saying.

"I do not believe in it," he continued. "But I see well enough how men
may, since I have known you. We have grown so intimate in these few
weeks, we seem to understand each other so wholly, with so little
effort, we spend such happy, peaceful hours together every day, that
I can almost fancy our two selves having been together through a whole
lifetime in some former state, living together, thinking together,
inseparable from birth, an