“her words to Scorn Are scattered, and her mouth is stopt with Dust!” His hand shut involuntarily, painfully, on hers, and as though his breath cut him, he said, “Don’t--don’t, Eppie.” But with her gaiety she insisted: “Oh, but let us have the truth. You must think it. What else could you think?” and, again with the note of pity that would atone for the cruel lightness, “Poor Gavan! My poor, darling Gavan! And I must leave you with your thoughts--your empty thoughts, alone.” He had taken a long breath over the physical pang her words had inflicted, and now he looked down at her hand, gently, one after the other, as though unseeingly, smoothing her fingers. “While I go on,” she said. “Yes, dear,” he assented. “You humor me with that. You are so glad, for me, that I go with all my illusions about me. Aren’t you afraid that, because of them, I’ll be caught in the mill again and ground round and round in incarnations until, only after such a long time, I come out all clean and white and selfless, not a scrap of dangerous life about me--Alone with the Alone.” He felt now the fever in her clearness, the hovering on the border of hallucination. The colors flamed indeed, and her thoughts seemed to shoot up in strange flickerings, a medley of inconsequent memories and fancies strung on their chain of unnatural lucidity. He answered with patient gentleness, “I’m not afraid for you, Eppie. I don’t think all that.” “Nor I for myself,” she retorted. “I love the mill and its grindings. But what you think,--I know perfectly what you think. You can’t keep it from me, Gavan. You can’t keep anything from me. And I found something that said it all. I can remember it. Shall I say it to you?” He bowed his head, smoothing her hand, not looking up at her while, in that voice of defiance, of fever, yet of such melancholy and echoing sweetness, she repeated: “Ne suis-je pas un faux accord Dans la divine symphonie, Grâce à la vorace Ironie Qui me secoue et qui me mord? “Elle est dans ma voix, la criarde! C’est tout mon sang, ce poison noir! Je suis le sinistre miroir Où la mégère se regarde! “Je suis la plaie et le couteau! Je suis le soufflet et la joue! Je suis les membres et la roue, Et le victime et le bourreau!” She paused after it, smiling intently upon him, and he met the smile to say: “That’s only one side of it, dear.” “Ah, it’s a side I know about, too! Didn’t I see it, feel it? Haven’t I been all through it--with you, for you, because of you? Ah, when you left me--when you left me, Gavan--“ Still she smiled, with brilliant eyes, repeating, “Qui me secoue et qui me mord.” He was silent, sitting with his pallid, drooping head; and suddenly she put her other hand on his, on the hand that gently, mechanically, smoothed her fingers.