"Dodo," he said solemnly, not daring to look at her, "I suppose you are my destiny. I shall always go on loving you. If you need this from me to be happy as I want you--you have it." "Thanks," she said in a whisper. He felt suddenly the finality of their words as though the shadowy hand of destiny had moved between them, parting them irrevocably. "You have never been like any one else," he said solemnly. "I never thought I could forgive--well, I do understand. There is nothing more to be said. Write finis and close the book." He went to the rack and took up his hat and stick. "I suppose I shan't see you again or if I do it will be in the midst of a herd of human beings--to pretend correctly we never once dreamed an impossible dream. Good-by." Her lips murmured inarticulately. He took a step toward the irrevocable parting, and then stopped seeking anything to delay the inevitable. "One question--just one. You could not have loved him--your husband--that night. And now?" "I did then though I wasn't sure," she said as though this were the most natural question in the world. "Now? Yes, and yet it is nothing to the way I am going to love him, the way I must love him." "How can you say such things?" he said in a final stupefaction. The battle she had fought, the incredible triumph she had won, had left her exalted, lifted out of the personal self. She spoke now, as though unaware of his presence, as though trying to comprehend things beyond her ken. "What is a woman's life? Do you know? Just an exchange of illusions. I have put aside all the queer fantastic dreams of a girl--I haven't yet quite put on the new--not quite. I suppose for just this one moment--this one moment of absolute truth, I can see myself as I really am, just for a moment--perhaps I shall never want to look at myself so steadily again. To-day I can look ahead and know everything that is coming. I know that I shall make myself just what he, my husband, wishes me to be. I shall really become what he now thinks I am. I shall have children--many children I hope. My home, my husband, my children--there will never be room for any other thought in my life. Mine--all that is mine, I shall cling to and keep!" She heard the door close, as the man before the sanctity of the revelation, had gone in reverence. Then suddenly a horror of the past, of the room, of the Dodo that had been, seized her. She wished now only to finish, to escape and never to return. She ran to the trunk, seized the bundle of letters and keepsakes and flung them in the fireplace. Then seizing a box, she struck several matches and applied them feverishly. All at once the door opened and the voice of her husband cried gaily: "Caught!" She gave a scream, reeling against the mantelpiece. He sprang hurriedly to her side, gathering her into his arms, apologizing for the fright he had given her while she lay trembling and shivering, quite hysterical.