She took him with her onto the moors that noontide, where the hills stood purple against the sky and valleys were steeped in a glamour of mist. Walking close at his elbow, but looking seldom in his face, she spoke little, seeming intent rather on making her sympathy a refuge for the man’s tired thoughts. She was infinitely restful and tender, calm as moonlight upon still water. To Gabriel that afternoon she appeared as a twin sister to his own beloved Judith, save that she was crowned with a divine mystery such as a sister could never claim. “You are tired,” she had said, as they crossed the moors and met a soft wind from the sea. “Why do you think that?” he asked her, with a kind of quiet pain in his voice. “I can see it in your eyes. Are not all your moods intelligible to me?” “You are right,” he answered, with his melancholy smile; “the trivialities of life are beginning to weigh upon me. I would give much gold to be young again, and free.” “Are you so old?” “As old as a youth who has been bred in a dungeon, whose best years have been tombed in stone.” “Perhaps you think too much,” she said. “Perhaps! Who can help thinking when one has made mistakes. I hope to think some day for the benefit of others.” “You would warn them?” “Yes,” he said, with a sad simplicity; “that is the best use to which we can put our errors. But I am weary of psychology for the moment. Let us forget problems and be children.” She looked over the world with half-closed lids, the sun beating upon her face. “As you will,” she said, quietly; “and yet I think a time comes when it is impossible to be a child again, when the mind ceases to ebb and flow, but moves like a river perpetually towards the sea. The intense realism of life burns upon the brain and reduces the flimsier interests to ashes. Only the iron is left, and that is at white heat.” “How do you know all this?” he asked. “It is what life seems to be teaching me.” “Yes,” he said, with a sudden, strange solemnity; “never more shall we be children on earth, for the heart of the child is tombed in the ice of knowledge. It is all plain to me now. Life is a grim thing to those who are only half strong. I have often thought of late that there is nothing left me worth living for.” “Do you mean it?” she asked, almost hastily. “No,” he said, looking in her eyes and reading his soul’s image in them; “I spoke only of the life that is; you are part of the ideal.” There was a sudden, strange intensity of feeling upon her face. Her eyes were wide and appealing. She drew her breath in deeply like one who sings. “Gabriel,” she said. He glanced at her, and the color on his bronzed face deepened. His silence told her that he waited. “I want to live; I want to be real to you, flesh and blood, a woman, not a mere spirit.” “Joan!” “Can I not be real to you?” “You are the most splendid and ideal reality Heaven has ever vouchsafed to me.”