“No, not now. I’m interested in your--what is it?--your lack of power to love.” “Lack! How little you know me! I am _all_ power to love. I am a quivering mass of exquisitely delicate, sensitive nerves. I am a seething torrent, of hot blood. I am an empty heart, deep and terrible as this valley, hungry for love as it is hungry for precious rain or dew. I am an illimitable emotion, heaving like the tides of the sea. I am all love.” “And I--only a stupid blunderer,” said Adam. “You use a knife relentlessly, sometimes.... Wansfell, listen.... I have a child--a lovely girl. She is fourteen years old--the sweetest.... Ah! Before she was born I did not love her--I did not _want_ her. But afterward!... Wansfell, a mother’s love is divine. But I had more than that. All--all my heart went out to Ruth.... _Love!_ Oh, my God! does any man know the torture of love?... Oh, _I_ know! I had to leave her--I had to give her up ... and I’ll never--never see--her--again!” The woman bowed with hands to her face and all her slender body shook. “Forgive me!” whispered Adam, huskily, in distress. It was all he could say for a moment. She had stunned him. Never had he imagined her as a mother. “Yet--yet I’m glad I know now. You should have told me. I am your friend. I’ve tried to be a--a brother. Tell me, Magdalene. You’ll be the--the less troubled. I will help you. I think I understand--just a little. You seemed to me only a very young woman--and you’re a mother! Always I say I’ll never be surprised again. Why, the future is all surprise!... And your little girl’s name is Ruth? Ruth Virey. What a pretty name!” Adam had rambled on, full of contrition, hating himself, trying somehow to convey sympathy. Perhaps his words, his touch on her bowed shoulder, helped her somewhat, for presently she sat up, flung back her hair, and turned a tear-stained face to him. How changed, how softened, how beautiful! Slowly her eyes were veiling an emotion, a glimpse of which uplifted him. “Wansfell, I’m thirty-eight years old,” she said. “No! I can’t believe that!” he ejaculated. “It’s true.” “Well, well! I guess I’ll go back to figuring the desert. But speaking of age--you guess mine. I’ll bet you can’t come any nearer to mine.” Gravely she studied him, and in the look and action once more grew composed. “You’re a masculine Sphinx. Those terrible lines from cheek to jaw--they speak of agony, but not of age. But you’re gray at the temples. Wansfell, you are thirty-seven--perhaps forty.” “Magdalene Virey!” cried Adam, aghast. “Do I look so old? Alas for vanished youth!... I am only twenty-six.” It was her turn to be amazed. “We had better confine ourselves to other riddles than love and age. They are treacherous.... Come, let us be going.” CHAPTER XVII The hour came when Magdalene Virey stirred Adam to his depths.