“In the name of goodness, what prevented you from telling her so then!” exclaimed the parson with sudden testiness. “Aye, David, and sparing us all this sorrow? You could have won her easily enough.” “Because I was mad, I suppose. Oh, my dear old friend, never protest! I am sane again now, sane enough at least to know how mad I have been—call it by what euphemistic name you like. I might have won her, but did not know myself, could not trust myself. I believed I had done with human love, you know. I had consecrated myself to worlds beyond this one. She came to call me down from my unnatural life. She spoke to me, with sweet human voice, of lovely human things; she laid her tender hand on mine. It was my madness that I dulled my ears, that I made no answer to her touch. And yet there was happiness, ah, God, what happiness, in it all! Then came that last strange night! What happened to me I cannot recall. But ever since then I have been so sane, that, before God, I could almost wish the old folly back now that I have lost all. The curse of common sense is on me: I can no longer lose myself in visions on my tower. There stands Bindon, my house, my desolate house, an empty shell, full of echoes. Before me lies a desolate, empty life, full of memories. Everything, everything speaks of her, calls for her! Nothing can ever be sweet to me for the want of her. Once she said to me: ‘David, David, why is your heart empty, why are there no children round your knee!’ And I made answer: ‘Never can such things be for me.’ And then she wept over me.... You are right, sir, I might have won her. Sometimes, reason notwithstanding, under the pulse of vague, elusive memories I cannot fix, I think that in spite of all she loved me.” The parson started again and flung an apprehensive glance at the speaker. The latter noted it; and the cold desolation of his voice changed for a light tone of irony that was somehow quite as melancholy: “But never fear, dear sir, this is no return of madness. Who can fathom a woman’s heart? All lies shrouded in mystery and, as you say, we know but one thing:—that we have lost her!”