“Oh, you poor darling!—­and you would have danced so beautifully!” he cried in agony, and drew her into his arms.  She tried to beat herself free and twisted her mouth away from his consoling kisses, so that she might sob, “But it wasn’t a sacrifice, it wasn’t a sacrifice!  Those were only moods.  I never really wanted anything except to be with you!” But her bliss in him had been too tightly strung by his sudden coming and by his open speech of that concerning which they spoke as seldom as the passionately religious speak of God, so for a little time she had to weep.  But presently she stretched out her hand and pressed back his seeking mouth.

“Hush!” she said with a grave wildness.  “We must not talk like this.”

He lifted his face, which was convulsed with love and pain, and found her stern as a priestess who defends her mystery from violation.  Meekly he let his arms fall from her body and turned away, resting his head on his hand and staring at a blank wall.

She saw that she had hurt him.  She drew close to him again, and murmured lovingly, though still with defensive majesty:  “Why should we talk of it, my boy?  It’s all over now, and you’re a made man.  This contract really does mean that, doesn’t it?”

He answered, patting her hand to show that he submitted to her in everything, “Oh, in the end it means illimitable power.”

To give him pleasure she exchanged with him a brilliant and triumphant glance, though at this moment she felt that her love for him concerned itself less with ambition than she had ever supposed.  Incredulously she whispered to her harsh, sceptical mind that it almost seemed as if its sphere were not among temporal things.  But it gave her a real rapture to perceive in his eyes the elder brother of the expression that had always dwelt there in his childish days when he announced to her his cricket-scores and his prizes; even so, she had thought then, the adjutant of a banished leader might hand him down arrows to shoot on the city that had exiled him.  And indeed the success of their conspiracy had been marvellous.  In old times they had looked out of this house under lowered and defiant brows, knowing there was none without who knew of them who did not despise them.  But now they could smile tenderly and derisively out into this hushed moonlight that received the uncountable and fatuously peaceful breaths of the sleepers who had been their enemies and were to be their slaves.  It was strange that at this of all instants she should for the space of a heartbeat lose her sense of the uniqueness of her fate and be confounded by amazement at the common lot in which they two and the vanquished sleepers alike partook.  Was it possible that this could be?  That this plethora of beings that coated the careless turning earth like grains of dust on a sleeping top were born—­mysterious act!—­and mated—­act so much more mysterious than it seemed!—­and died—­act which was the essence of mystery!  She was dizzied