The succeeding scenes followed quickly, and they had ranged from melodrama to genuine tragedy, all based on this one theme of love. Not, however, love as he had conceived it. This had been no affair for winged cherubs to indulge in. And it had ceased to be a play. It was too serious--too grimly real for that. This had been a man’s game. And a woman’s game, too. But the stakes were terribly high. Sitting there in the corner of this darkened shack waiting for the dawn (which for all he knew might turn out to be night), with this other palpitating human being so curiously involved with him, Allston began to sense something of what love really is. As he vibrated to the dynamic power of this mighty force, he began to sense something of what life really is. And the two were one. The two were one; that was the full significance of both love and life. A man floundered on trying to separate the inseparable until he discovered this. Neither prose nor poetry; reality nor dreams; man nor woman, had any real existence apart from the other. When they did unite, their potentiality was akin to that of God. Out of that union came all the big things that are; came life itself. Concretely this meant for Allston that woman with whom he had been in such light contact during these last few weeks. It meant Wilmer Howe. And yet it did not mean the Wilmer who in her pretty setting had been acting her dainty comedy--the idyl of the winged cherub--but the real woman back of her; the woman of flesh and blood whom for a few brief seconds he had felt when he grasped her hand; the woman who was, if she was at all, in the secrecy of her room. And how he hungered for her now in this crisis! How, had she been near, he would have dragged her out of herself--brutally if necessary! How, had she been as close to him as this other was, he would have covered her hair and forehead with kisses, kisses both sacred and burning. His lips grew hot and dry at thought of it. Roxie opened her drowsy eyes. “Yer warm enough?” she asked with the tenderness of a cooing dove. Allston started. “Yes,” he answered. “I feel’s though I was goin’ asleep.” “That’s the best thing you could do,” he replied. “I’ve dreamed a dream like this,” she smiled gently. “You might as well keep on dreaming--till morning.” That was the best thing she could do. And he was entitled to his dreams, too, until morning. So he gave himself up to them riotously, but with his eyes wide open and his brain clear--as though they were not dreams at all. It was as though Wilmer had come to him here and made herself an integral part of him--blending into him until she became one with him.