"When I started into this with you I was dead--dead. My soul was withered within me. All women were my playthings--all but one. She was my Queen--my wife that was to be. I was dead, my God--how dead I was! I now see with a clearness that is killing me; a clearness as of one waking from sleep and feeling, in the first wave of conscience, that inconceivable tenderness which hurts so--hurts because it is tender and before the old hard consciousness of material things come again to toughen. How dead I was, you may know when I say that all this web now around you--from your entrance into the mill till now--here to-night--in my power--body and soul--that it was all to gratify this dead sea fruit of my soul, this thing in me I cannot understand, making me conquer women all my life for--oh, as a lion would, to kill, though not hungry, and then lie by them, dying, and watch them,--dead! Then this same God--if any there be--He who you say put more on you than you could bear--He struck me, as, well--no--He did not strike--but ground me, ground me into dust--took her out of my life and then laid my soul before me so naked that the very sunlight scorches it. What was it the old preacher said--that 'touch of God' business? 'Touch--'" he laughed, "not touch, but blow, I say--a blow that ground me into star-dust and flung me into space, my heart a burning comet and my soul the tail of it, dissolving before my very eyes. What then can I, a lion, dying, care for the doe that crosses my path? The beautiful doe, beautiful even as you are. Do you understand me, child?" She scarcely knew what she did. She remembered only the terrible empty room. The owl uncannily turning its head here and there and staring at her with its eyes, yellow in the firelight. She dropped on the floor by him and clung again to his knees, her head in his lap in pity for him. "That is the story of the dying lion," he said after a while. "The lion who worked all his cunning and skill and courage to get the beautiful doe in his power, only to find he was dying--dying and could not eat. Could you love a dying lion, child?" he asked abruptly--"tell me truly, for as you speak so will I act--would make you queen of all the desert." She raised her eyes to his. They were wet with tears. He had touched the pity in them. She saw him as she had never seen him before. All her fear of him vanished, and she was held by the cords of a strange fascination. She knew not what she did. The owl looked at her queerly, and she almost sobbed it out, hysterically: "Oh, I could--love--you--you--who are so strong and who suffer--suffer so"-- "You could love me?" he asked. "Then, then I would marry you to-night--now--if--if--that uncovering--that touch--had not been put upon me to do nobler things than to gratify my own passion, had not shown me the other half which all these years has been dead--my double." He was silent.