I put my arms on the table, my face on my arms, and sat still for a long while. When it had grown dark and late I hid the letter underneath my pillow, and went to sleep without a light in the room. Once during the night I sat up in bed and lit a candle, and then I took the letter and holding it close to the light looked for one passage: "If you had remained here, I do not know what might have happened; if you come back, I know what will happen. But the question is, may it come thus? You are not a girl of the ordinary type; you belong to the race of Asra, the people who die when they love. And because I have known that from the first, I have done for you what I have never done for another woman yet--namely, got hold of the head of the beast within, turned it round sharply and laughed at it." I hid the letter again and lay very still in my bed.... That then was the end of it.... Tired and reluctantly my thoughts pilgrimaged back. I saw myself again as I was--poor, lonesome, waiting until the moment when the fairest miracle which life has ever held came to me, and every thought within me stretched forth arms, as it were, in order to receive it. I felt once more how every word, every look of his, pressed itself into my soul like a red-hot seal, and I suffered anew all the tortures and all the happiness. And all at once I thought again of the story of "Morgan" and of his young wife.... How truly different an ending, and yet how similar a victory! For which was more glorious for a girl--that a man should make her his wife, or make her his most beautiful dream, and his lasting desire? And all that I vainly tried to comprehend before I comprehended now. "Yes," I said to myself--and I said it aloud into the darkness of the room--"discontented, restless, aimless, freed from one passion to-day, and chained to another passion to-morrow, thus will he stagger through his life. Ever full of desire, never at peace with himself, he will taste of every pleasure and get to know every disgust. But above all pleasure and above all disgust there will be the one longing of his soul, which had denied itself the drink, because of the dregs it knew to be at the goblet's bottom. Not while in ecstasy, not in the hustle and bustle of the day will he be aware of it--nay, but when he lies awake at night, filled with a sense of utter loneliness, listening to the pouring rain outside, then it will come to life again, will throb and tremble through his soul, soft and pleading like an old forgotten strain." And after I had said that, I smiled that strange wonderful smile, which only a woman knows who is willing to take upon herself the heaviest burden for the sweet sake of love. Next morning I left the house very early and wandered through the streets of London. To-day I knew that I would wander through those streets many, many times yet, and for a long, long while.