"Hesther," Dunbar said, turning towards her, "if we get free of this and you can get rid of that man--I ask you as I've asked you every week for the last ten years--will you marry me?" "Yes," she said. But for the moment she turned to Harkness. He was looking through the bars out to the sky where the mist was now very faintly rose like the coloured smoke of far distant fire. She put her hand on his shoulder, keeping her other hand in Dunbar's. "I don't know why you said you were so much older than we are. You're not. Do you promise to be the friend of both of us always?" "Yes," he said. Something mockingly repeated in his brain, "It is a far better thing that I do----" He burst out laughing. The macaw awoke, put up his head and screamed. "You are both younger by centuries than I," he said. "I was born old. I was born with the Old Man of Europe singing in my ears. I was born to the inheritance of borrowed culture. The gifts that the fairies gave me at my cradle were Michael Angelo's 'David,' Rembrandt's 'Goldweigher's Field,' the 'Temples at Pæstum,' the Da Vinci 'Last Supper,' the Breughels at Vienna, the view of the Jungfrau from Mürren, the Grand Canal at dawn, Hogarth's prints, and the Quintet of the _Meistersinger._ Yes, the gifts were piled up all right. But just as they were all showered upon me in stepped the Wicked Fairy and said that I should have them all--on condition that I didn't touch! Never touch--never. At least I've known that they were there, at least I've bent the knee, but--until last night--until last night. . . ." He suddenly took Hesther's face between his two hands, kissed her on the forehead, on the eyes, on the mouth: "I don't know what's coming in a quarter of an hour. I don't like to think. To tell you the truth I'm in the devil of a funk. But I love you, I love you, I love you. Like an uncle you know or at least like a brother. You've taken a match and set fire to this old tinder-box that's been dry and dusty so long, and now it's alight--such a pretty blaze!" He broke away from them both with a smile that suddenly made him look young as they'd never seen him: "I've danced the town, I've climbed rocks. I've dared the devil. I've fallen in love, and I know at last that there's such a hunger for beauty in my soul that it must go on and on and on. Why should it be there? My parents hadn't it, my sisters haven't it, no one tried to give it to me. I've done nothing with it until last night, but now when I've needed it, it's come to my help. I've touched life at last. I'm alive. I never can die any more!" The macaw screamed again and again, beating at the cage with its wings. "Hesther, never lose courage. Remember that he can't touch you, that no one can touch you. You're your own immortal mistress."