She laid her hands upon the table. “You will know, John Mark.” “Tell me, now.” “I cannot tell you. But I will help you to know.” “Tell me. Tell me.” She shook her head: “You will know what you have done. One can know only that which has been done.” “How can you be so ruthless? This godless horror----” “It is not godless, Doctor Mark.” “I am not godless?” “Why, no. Of course not, Doctor Mark.” “But it is horror. It is horror even to you....” “It is not godless. Go home. You will know.” I pressed myself from the chair. “Tell me one thing then: is it _human_?” She shook her head. “How do we know how many things are human?” A great lust took me then to ravish her of her secret. I leaned over the table and I gripped her arms. I drew her up toward me across the table. I vised her shoulders. “Tell me! Tell me!” She shut her eyes, so close now to my own; and her hands fended them. Her desert face, her talonous hands were very near my eyes. I thought of Mildred: I had grasped her, too--to force what truth from her?--and I had failed. I was motionless in amaze at my cruel thought linking this woman with Mildred, linking my need of her with my love for Mildred. “Let go,” I heard her mutter. “Do you want to blind me?” I released her. “You have promised.” And I laid a bill on the table. “John Mark,” she said. And still her bitter presence mingled in my mind with Mildred.... Mildred! “I cannot break the body of your way to-night with words any more than to-morrow can invade to-day. Each has its place appointed. You will come upon to-morrow waiting your way, and you will come upon knowledge waiting your way. I am a part of the morrow of your knowing. I cannot break in. You have been with me, John Mark, only as a traveler is with the distant town that his eyes behold from a hill’s height, deep and far on his way within the valley.” She took my money and placed it in a drawer. I held her hand gently. “Why is this horror just my life?” She shook her head, and her free hand touched my brow in a caress. “There we are all children. That ... the one mystery worth knowing ... none of us may know. Our eyes can study deep in the ways of life. But God’s will ... God’s reasons.... There we are all children.” _m_ Sixth avenue. Unwittingly, perhaps to place myself once more in the world? I looked at my watch. 9.03. Only 9.03! I have swept out so far and come back, and my watch says 9.03. I turn toward home, and my steps hurry me. Why is that? Am I running from the black apocalypse behind, or rushing toward some blacker revelation? I do not know: I am encased in darkness, and that is all that I feel. My power to touch the body of the world, the deeds and ways of my friends, is gone from me. I move through presentiment of birth, as in a womb. So different from life, this dank dark mother of my ignorance. And yet a womb, nourishing me and pressing me toward the light.