* * * * *

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.

His influence was once more upon me.

In the silence—­for it was some time before he spoke, and I was dumb—­my accursed eye for detail had taken in the change in him.  Yet I fancied I was not looking at him.  I noted that he had aged—­that this was one of the periods in him which I knew so well—­when a passion for work was on him, and the fever and fervor of creation trained him down like a race-horse, all spirit and force.  I noted that he still wore the velveteens and the broad hat and loose open collar of his student days.

Sitting on either side of the tomb he had built to enshrine her, on carved marble seats such as Tuscan poets sat on, in the old days, to sing to fair women, with our gaze focussed on the long white form between us—­ah, between us indeed!—­his voice broke the long silence.

He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and the broad brim of his soft hat swept the marble floor with a gentle rhythmic swish, as it swung idly from his loosened grasp.  I heard it as an accompaniment to his voice.

His eyes never once strayed from her face.

“You think you are to be pitied,” he said.  “You are wrong!  No one who has not sinned against another needs pity.  I meant you no harm.  Fate—­my temperament, your immobility, the very gifts that have made me what I am were to blame—­if blame there were.  Every one of us must live out his life, according to his nature.  I, as well as you!