nto thy hands, O
Lord ...!" he almost sobbed.

She had fallen suddenly into such a storm of hot caresses that her
breath failed her as if a hailstorm were beating down on her. She
pushed him away, and at the same time nestled closer to him.

"Do you love me, then? Do you love me?" she asked him, trembling and
shaken.

"Do I love you? For heaven's sake, would not any one love anything so
young and wonderful when he sees it and feels it? What do you think?
Skin and hair with the scent of May in them!"

She freed herself from his arms and walked silently by his side for a
little way. "Do you love me?" she asked again, as shaken and
distraught as he was. "Do you know me? Do you know what I want in
life?"

"You want me!" he said passionately.

She wanted to speak, she tried--tried--tried, but her excitement was
too great. "Do you wish to be my friend?" she said at last, anxiously.

"Yes--of course I do!" he answered.

"Will you teach me how to think? I want to be as much alive as you
are."

"Silly child!" He would have taken her in his arms again; but she kept
him off with passionate refusal.

"I love you because you are different from the others, and so that you
may speak to me as to a friend, as to a human being."

"And don't I, then?"

"I don't want to live my life asleep all the time, do you hear?"

"What a strange little woman-thing you are! There's a time for kissing,
and a time for everything, you babe!"

"Life is what I long for!" she cried, trembling with the uncertainty of
what it was she wanted.

"Life? Love _is_ life!"

"No, no! To understand--that is life. If I join my life to yours, I
want to be alive, and not dead and dumb as my mother was."

"You have queer notions. Do you suppose, then, that people can learn
how to think as they learn any other trade f I tell you, what you've
got to do is to love life--I'll make it my business to see that you
love it!"

"I shouldn't like to be cast off," she said with a kind of bitterness,
"when you thought I was no longer beautiful. I should run away from you
if you deceived me and were no longer my friend."

"All right," he said, laughing. So they walked along close together,
and he kept his arm tightly about her waist. "Bound," he said, "you
will walk more freely and happily than unbound. Everything is not what
it seems to be. You catch sight of a thought or a feeling, and you
imagine it is as simple and as limited as a point. You come closer to