“I understand. All I ever read has come back to me here on the desert, as clear as the print on the page--seen so many years ago. I used to hate Sunday school when I was a boy. But now, often, words of the Bible come before my mind.... But are you telling me the whole truth? Why did you say, ‘Time--stand still here,’ when I held you in my arms?” “What a boy you are!” she murmured, and her eyes held a gladness for the sight of him. “Confess, now, wouldn’t that moment have been a beautiful one for time to stop--for life to stand still--for the world to be naught--for thought and memory to cease?” “Yes, it would,” he replied, “but no more beautiful than this moment while you stand there so. When you look like that you make me hope.” “For what?” she queried, softly. “For you.” “Wansfell, you are the only man I’ve ever known who could have held me in his arms and have been blind and dead to the nature of a woman.... Listen. You’ve done me the honor to say I have splendid thoughts and noble emotions. I hope I have. I know you have inspired many. I know this valley of death has changed my soul.... But, Wansfell, I am a woman, and a woman is more than her high and lofty thoughts--her wandering inspirations. A woman is a creature of feeling, somehow doomed.... When I said, ‘Time--stand still here,’ I was false to the woman in me that you idealize. A thousand thoughts, emotions, memories, desires, sorrows, vanities prompted the words of which you have made me ashamed. But to spare myself a little, let me say that it would indeed be beautiful for me to have you take me up into your arms--and then for time to stand still forever.” “Do you mean that--so--you’d feel safe, protected, at rest?” he asked, with emotion.