life, just
Parrot & Co."

"Parrot & Co.!"

It was like a caress; but he was too dull to sense it, and she was
unconscious of the inflection. The burning sunshine gave to his hair
and beard the glistening of ruddy gold. Her imagination, full of
unsuspected poetry at this moment, clothed him in the metals of a
viking. There were other whirlpools beside those in her eyes, but Elsa
did not sense the drifting as he had done. It was insidious.

"An incident," she repeated.

"Could I be more?" with sudden fierceness. "Could I be more in any
woman's life? I take myself for what I am, but the world will always
take me for what I have done. Yes, I am Paul Ellison, forgotten, I
hope, by all those who knew me. Why did you seek me that night? Why
did you come into my life to make bitterness become despair? The
blackest kind of despair? Elsa Chetwood, Elsa! . . . Well, the consul
is right. I _am_ a strong man. I can go out of your life, at least
physically. I can say that I love you, and I can add to that good-by!"

He wheeled abruptly and went quickly down the gallery, bareheaded,
without any destination in his mind, with only one thought, to leave
her before he lost the last shreds of his self-control.

It was then that Elsa knew her heart. She had spoken truly. She was a
pagan: for, had he turned and held out his hands, she would have gone
to him, gone with him, anywhere in the world, lawfully or unlawfully.

XIX

TWO LETTERS

Elsa sang. She flew to her mirror. The face was hers and yet not
hers. Always her mirror had told her that she was beautiful; but up to
this moment her emotion had recorded nothing stronger than placid
content. Now a supreme gladness filled and tingled her because her
beauty was indisputable. When Martha came to help her dress for
dinner, she still sang. It was a wordless song, a melody that every
human heart contains and which finds expression but once. Elsa loved.

Doubt, that arch-enemy of love and faith and hope, doubt had spread its
dark pinions and flown away into yesterdays. She felt the zest and
exhilaration of a bird just given its freedom. Once she slipped from
Martha's cunning hands and ran out upon the gallery.

"Elsa, your waist!"

Elsa laughed and held out her bare arms to the faded sky where, but a
little while since, the sun had burned a pathway down the world. All
in an hour, one small trifling space of time, this wonderful, magical
thing had