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As I gazed down into her white face, I heard the steps of my friend, even above the roaring of the river, as he strode down the hillside, out of my life! And I know not even to-day which was the bitterest grief, the loss of my faith in being loved, or the passing from my heart of that man!

Of the pain of the night that followed, only the silence and our own hearts knew.

Love and passion are so twinned in some hours of life that one cannot distinguish in himself the one from the other.

Into my keeping “to have and to hold,” the law had given this beautiful woman, “until death should us part.” I loved her! But, out of her heart, at once stronger and weaker than mine, my friend had barred me.

It is not in hours like these, that all men can be sane.

I thought of what might have been, if they had not met that night, and my ignoble side craved ignorance of that Chance, or the brutality to ignore it.

I looked down into that cold face as I laid her from the arms that had borne her down the hill–laid her on what was to have been her nuptial couch–and closed the door between us and all the world.

We were together–alone–at last!

I had dreamed of this hour. Here was its realization. I watched the misery of remembrance dawn slowly on her white face. I pitied her as I gazed at her, yet my whole being cried out in rage at its own pity. On her trembling lips I seemed to see his kisses. In her frightened eyes I saw his image. The shudder that shook her whole body as her eyes held mine, confessed him–and that confession kept me at bay.

All that night I sat beside her.

What mad words I uttered a merciful nature never let me recall.

In the chill dawn I fled from her presence.

The width of the world had lain between us, me–and this woman whom I had worshipped, of whom a consuming jealousy had made ten years of my life a mad fever, which only her death had cured. Saner men have protested against the same situation that ruined me–and yet, even in my reasoning moments, like this, I knew that to have rebelled would have been to have forced a tragic climax before the hour at which Fate had fixed it.

* * * * *

When something–I know not what–recalled me again to the present, I found that I had sat by her a day, as, on our last meeting, I watched out the night. The sun, which had sent its almost level rays in at the east door of the tomb when I entered, was now shining in brilliant almost level rays in at the west.

The day was passing.

A shadow fell from the opposite door. I became suddenly conscious of his presence, and, once more, across her body, I looked into my friend’s eyes.

Between us, as on that dreadful night, she was stretched!

But she was at peace.

Our colliding emotions might rend us, they could never again tear at her gentle heart. That was at rest.

Over her we stood once more, as if years had not passed–years of silence.

Above the woman we had both loved, we two, who had stood shoulder to shoulder in battle, been one in thought and ambition until passion rent us asunder, met as we parted, but she was at peace!

We had severed without farewells.

We met without greetings.

We stood in silence until he waved me to a broad seat behind me, and sank into a similar niche opposite.

We sat in the shadow.

She lay between us in the level light of the setting sun, which fell across her from the wide portal, and once more our eyes met on her face, but they would not disturb her calm.