“But the real Madala Grey—she wasn’t like that. She was just a girl. She was hungry all the time. She was wanting her human life. And he, the man they laugh at, ‘the thing she married,’ he did love that real Madala Grey. Why, he didn’t even know of the legend. Don’t you see that that was what she wanted? She could take from him as well as give. Life—the bread and wine—they shared it. Oh, and it’s him I pity now, not you. Not you,” I said again, while my heart ached over him. “You—can’t you see what she showed you? Not herself——” “What then?” he said harshly. I made the supreme effort. “But what—a woman—one day—would be to you.” I thought the silence would never break. The strange courage that had been in me was suddenly gone. I felt weak and friendless. I wanted to cry. I waited and waited till I could bear it no longer. Then I lifted my eyes desperately, with little hope, to read in his face what the end should be. I found him looking at me fixedly—_at_ me, you understand, not through me to a subject that absorbed him, but at me myself. It was as if he were seeing me for the first time. No—as if he recognized me at last. Then the doubts went, and the shame and the loneliness. It made me so utterly happy, that look on his face. I felt my heart beating fast. He said then, slowly—I can remember the words, the tone and pitch of his voice, the very shaping of his mouth as he said it— “Do you know—it’s strange—you remind me of her. You are very like her. You are very like Madala Grey.” The hunger in his voice hurt me. I wanted to put my arms round him and comfort him. I might have done it, for I knew I was still but half real to him. But I sat still—only, with such a sense in my heart of a trust laid upon me, of an inheritance, of a widening and golden future, I said to him— “Yes. I know.” PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ● Transcriber’s Notes: ○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected. ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected. ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book. ○ The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.