In the dimness the snowy bed loomed beside them; pink roses patterned curtain and wall; the tiny night-light threw a roseate glow across her gown. In the fresh, sweet stillness of the room there was no sound or stir save their uneven breathing. Very gently he lifted one of her hands and looked at it almost curiously--this small white hand so innocently smooth--as unblemished as a child's--this unsullied little hand that for an instant seemed to be slowly relaxing its grasp on the white simplicity around her--here in this dim, fresh, fragrant world of hers, called, intimately, her room. And here where night and morning had so long held sacred all that he cared for upon earth--here in the white symbol of the world--her room--he gave himself again to her, without a word, without hope, knowing the end of all was near for them. But it was she, not he, who must make the sign that ended all. And, after a long, long time, as she made no sign: "Dearest," he breathed, "I know now that you will never go with me--for your father's sake." That was premature, for she only clung the closer. He waited cautiously, every instinct alert, his head close to hers. And at last the hot fragrance of her tears announced the beginning of the end. "Shiela?" A stifled sound from his shoulder where her head lay buried. "Choose now," he said. No answer. "Choose." She cowered in his arms. He looked at the little hand once more, no longer limp but clenched against his breast. And he knew that the end was close at hand, and he spoke again, forcing her to her victory. "Dearest, you must choose--" "Garry!" "Between those others--and me--" She shrank out of his arms, turned with a sob, swayed, and sank on her knees beside the bed, burying her head in her crossed arms. This was her answer; and with it he went away into the darkness, reeling, groping, while every pulse in him hammered ironic salutation to the victor who had loved too well to win. And in his whirling brain sounded the mocking repetition of his own words: "Nothing is lost through love! Nothing is lost--nothing--nothing!"--flouting, taunting him who had lost love itself there on the firing line, for a comrade's sake. His room was palely luminous with the lustre of the night. On the mantel squatted a little wizened and gilded god peering and leering at him through the shadows--Malcourt's parting gift--the ugliest of the nineteen. "For," said Malcourt--"there ought to be only eighteen by rights--unless further complications arise; and this really belongs to you, anyway." So he left the thing on Hamil's mantel, although the latter had no idea what Malcourt meant, or why he made the parting offering. Now he stood there staring at it like a man whose senses waver, and who fixes some object to steady nerve and brain.