of me turned suddenly into sweetnesses, and who could torment like this
exquisite fury, wondering in sudden flame why she could give herself to
anyone, while I wondered only why she could give herself to me. It may
be that I wondered over-much. Perhaps that was why I lost her.

It was in the full of the moon that she was most restive, but I brought
her back, and at first she could have bit my hand, but then she came
willingly. Never, I thought, shall she be wholly tamed, but he who knows
her will always be able to bring her back.

I am not that man, for mystery of mysteries, I lost her. I know not how
it was, though in the twilight of my life that then began I groped for
reasons until I wearied of myself; all I know is that she had ceased to
love me; I had won her love, but I could not keep it. The discovery came
to me slowly, as if I were a most dull-witted man; at first I knew only
that I no longer understood her as of old. I found myself wondering what
she had meant by this and that; I did not see that when she began to
puzzle me she was already lost to me. It was as if, unknowing, I had
strayed outside the magic circle.

When I did understand I tried to cheat myself into the belief that there
was no change, and the dear heart bleeding for me assisted in that poor
pretence. She sought to glide to me with swimming eyes as before, but it
showed only that this caressing movement was still within her compass,
but never again for me. With the hands she had pressed to her breast she
touched mine, but no longer could they convey the message. The current
was broken, and soon we had to desist miserably from our pretences.
She could tell no more than I why she had ceased to love me; she was
scarcely less anxious than I that I should make her love me again, and,
as I have said, she waited with a wonderful tolerance while I strove
futilely to discover in what I was lacking and to remedy it. And when,
at last, she had to leave me, it was with compassionate cries and little
backward flights.

The failure was mine alone, but I think I should not have been so
altered by it had I known what was the defect in me through which I let
her love escape. This puzzle has done me more harm than the loss of her.
Nevertheless, you must know (if I am to speak honestly to you) that I do
not repent me those dallyings in enchanted fields. It may not have been
so always, for I remember a black night when a poor lieutenant lay down
in an oarless b