mist wraps you, and you blunder forward, two-legged man swaying for a balance. Translate the oracle as you will--with your paint-pans, with your words--we get broken lights, half-phrases. But we guess the rest, and so we strain and grow. Who are you or I, that we should know her!” He stuffed the pages into the breast of his jelab, and sat brooding over the paling fire for a while; then, by an abrupt transition, he said--“A fatal inclination for instructing the young was, perhaps, my undoing. I believe that I am a prig to the very fibres of me. If I had kept my didactics for my own sex, all might have gone well: I have never doubted but that I had things to teach my generation which it would be the happier of knowing. But it's a dangerous power to put into a man's hands that he shall instruct his betters. I was tempted by that deadliest flattery of all, and I fell. Despoina heard me, smiled at me, and went her way regardlessly; but my poor Mary was a victim. She heard me, and took it seriously. She thought me a man of God. I failed absolutely, and so badly that by rights I ought never to have held up my head again. But she is happy, dear little soul, after her own peculiar fashion,--which she never could have been with me. She writes to me now and then. The man, her husband, is her master, but not a bad one. She knows it, and glories in him. Isn't that extraordinary?” “Not at all,” Glyde said, who knew nothing of Mary. “It's a law of Nature. The woman follows the man. I suppose you treated her as an equal?” “No, as a superior, which she plainly was,” said Senhouse. “Then,” Glyde said, looking at him, “then you made her so. If you fly against Nature, you must get the worst of it.” He waited, then asked, “It's against your principles to marry a woman, no doubt.” “Quite,” Senhouse said. “It seems to me an insult to propose it to her.” “Your Mary didn't think so.” “She did at first; but she couldn't get used to it.” “She felt naked without the ring? And ashamed?” “God help me,” said Senhouse, “that's true. The moment I realised what had happened, I gave in.” “And then she refused?” “She neither accepted nor refused. She lived apart. We were in Germany at the time. I was naturalising plants for the Grand Duke of Baden--filling the rocks and glades in the Black Forest. She went into an hotel in Donaueschingen, and I went to see her every day. We were friends. Then we went to England, to London. She held to that way of life, and I did the best I could for myself. At any moment I would have taken her. I considered myself bound in every way. I could have been happy with her. She had great charm for me--great physical charm, I mean--and sweet, affectionate ways. I could have made her a wife and a mother.