"Don't, oh, don't," she sobbed. "You break my heart!" But a moment later she added, brokenly, "Yes, yes--tell me the rest. Tell me all. Oh, she was so lonely! Why did you never go to her?" "I would have gone then. I went mad and cried out, 'My wife! my wife! I want my wife!' And I would have rushed down into the drifts of the mountain, but in that moment the curse of my heritage fell heavily upon me and left me powerless." The hermit's voice had risen--it trembled and died away with the final words. In the light of the fading embers only his outline could be seen--wandering into the dusk and silence. When he spoke again his tone was low and even. "And so the years went by. I saw the sturdy lad toil with his mother for a while, and then alone, and I knew by her slow step that the world was slipping from her grasp. I did not see the end. I might have gone, then, but it came at a time when the gloom hung on the mountains and I did not know. When the air cleared and for days I saw no life, I knew that the little house was empty--that she had followed him to rest. They two, whose birthright had been health and length of days, both were gone, while I, who from the cradle had made death my bed-fellow, still lingered and still linger through the years. "I put the magic glass aside after that for my books. Nothing was left me but my daily round, with them for company. Yet from a single volume I have peopled all the woods about, and every corner of my habitation. Through this forest of Arden I have walked with Orlando, and with him hung madrigals on the trees, half believing that Rosalind might find them. With Nick the Weaver on a moonlit bank I have waited for Titania and Puck and all that lightsome crew. On the wild mountain top I have met Lear, wandering with only a fool for company, and I have led them in from the storm and warmed them at this hearthstone. In that recess Romeo has died with Juliet in the Capulets' tomb. With me at that table Jack Falstaff and Prince Hal have crossed their wit and played each the rôle of king. Yonder, beneath the dim eaves, in the moment just before you came, Macbeth had murdered Duncan, and I saw him cravenly vanish at the sound of your fearsome knocking. "But what should all this be to you? It is but my shadow world--the only world I had until one day, out of the mist as you have come, so Robin came to me--her very self, it seemed--from heaven. At first it lay in my heart to tell him. But the fear of losing him held me back, as I have said. And of himself he told me as little. Rarely he referred to the past. Only once, when I spoke of kindred, he said that he was an orphan, with only a sister, who had found a home with kind people in a distant land. And with this I was content, for I had wondered much concerning the little girl."