bing through
the dark.

"Why do you tempt me?" she reproached. "Is it not hard enough, my duty?
For me it is such pleasure to be here--to leave for a while the
loneliness and chill of my narrow place! But you, so rich in all things,
free and happy--how should it matter to you if a voice in the dark
speaks or is silent? Let me go."

Wonder and exulting sense of power filled me.

"I can keep you, then?" I asked.

"I am--so weak."

"Desire Michell, I am as alone as you can be, in my real life. I have
gone apart from much that occupies men and women; gaining and losing in
different ways. One of the gains is freedom to dispose of myself without
grief or loss to anyone, except the perfunctory regret of friends. Will
you believe there is no risk that I would not take for a few hours with
you? Even with your voice in the dark? Come to me as you can, let us
take what time we may, and the chances be mine."

"But that is folly! You do not know. To protect you I must go."

"I refuse the protection. Stay! If there is sorrow in knowing you, I
accept it. I understand nothing. I only beg you not to turn me back to
the commonplace emptiness of life before I found you. Indeed, I will not
be sent away."

"If I yield, you will reproach me some day."

"Never."

"It could only be like this--that we should speak a few times before the
gates close upon me."

"What gates?"

"I cannot tell you."

"Very well," I took what the moment would grant me. "That is a bargain.
Yet, what safety lies in secrecy between us? If we are to help each
other, as I hope, would not plain openness be best? You will tell me no
more about yourself? Very well. Tell me something more about the enemy
in the dark whom I am to meet. You have hinted that It has a special
motive for fixing hate upon me beyond mere malignance toward mankind.
What is that motive?"

"Ask me not," she faintly refused me.

"I do ask you. My ignorance of everything concerned is a heavy drawback
in this combat. Arm me with a little understanding. What moves It
against me?"

The pause following was filled with a sense of difficulty and recoil,
her struggle against some terrible reluctance. So painful was that
effort, somehow clearly communicated to me, that I was about to devour
my curiosity and withdraw the question when her whisper just reached my
hearing:

"Jealousy!"

"Jealousy? Of what? For whom?"

"For--me."

The monstrous implication sank slowly into my understand