Ah, I see something now! I see! it was for this that I was preserved: I to be a sort of new-fangled Adam--and this little creature to be my Eve! That is it! _The White_ does not admit defeat: he would recommence the Race again! At the last, the eleventh hour--in spite of all--he would turn defeat into victory, and outwit that Other. However, if this be so--and I seem to see it quite clearly--then in that White scheme is a singular flaw: at _one point_, it is obvious, that elaborate Forethought fails: for I have a free will--and I refuse, I refuse. Certainly, in this matter I am on the side of the Black: and since it depends absolutely upon me, this time Black wins. No more men on the earth after me, ye Powers! To _you_ the question may be nothing more than a gambling excitement as to the final outcome of your aërial squabble: but to the poor men who had to bear the wrongs, Inquisitions, rack-rents, Waterloos, unspeakable horrors, it was hard earnest, you know! Oh the wretchedness--the deep, deep pain--of that bungling ant-hill, happily wiped out, my God! My sweetheart Clodagh ... she was not an ideal being! There was a man called Judas who betrayed the gentle Founder of the Christian Faith, and there was some Roman king named Galba, a horrid dog, and there was a French devil, Gilles de Raiz: and the rest were all much the same, much the same. Oh no, it was not a good race, that small infantry which called itself Man: and here, falling on my knees before God and Satan as I write, I swear, I swear: Never through me shall it spring and fester again. * * * * * I cannot realise her! Not at all, at all, at all! If she is out of my sight and hearing ten minutes, I fall to doubting her reality. If I lose her for half a day, all the old feelings, resembling certainties, come back, that I have only been dreaming--that this appearance cannot be an actual objective fact of life, since the impossible is impossible. Seventeen long years, seventeen long years, of madness.... * * * * * To-morrow I start for Imbros: and whether this girl chooses to follow me, or whether she stays behind, I will see her from the moment I land no more. * * * * * She must rise very early. I who am now regularly on the palace-roof at dawn, sometimes from between the pavilion-curtains of the galleries, or from the steps of the telescope-kiosk, may spy her far down below, a dainty microscopic figure, generally running about the sward, or gazing up in wonder at the palace from the lake-edge. It is now three months since she came with me to Imbros.