spat out the word. "I refuse to recognize their existence--"

He sprang to his feet and before her mind could flash to attention he
had caught her from her chair and was straining her to him, his arms,
his entire body, betraying no evidence whatever of depleted vitality.
"Let us forget it all!" he muttered. "We are still young and I am free.
I was a fool once and you will believe me when I tell you that I would
beg you on my knees to marry me even if you were Gisela Döring.... I
have leave of absence for a month ... let us be happy once more...."

"It was a long while ago ... all that ... do you realize how long?"

Gisela stood rigid, her eyes expanded. To her terror and dismay she was
thrilling and flaming from head to foot. This lover of her life might
have released her from one of their immortal hours but yesterday. But
although she had to brace her body from yielding, her mind (and it is
the curse of intellectual women of individual powers that the mind
never, in any circumstances, ceases to function) realized that while the
human will may be strong enough to banish memories, and readjust the
lonely soul, its most triumphant acts may be annihilated by the physical
contact of its mate. Unless replaced. Fool that she had been merely to
have buried the memory of this man by an act of will. She should have
taken a commonplace lover, or husband, put out that flaming midnight
torch with the standardizing light of day.

Her mind seemed to be darting from peak to peak in a swift and dazzling
flight as he talked rapidly and brokenly, kissing her cheek, her neck,
straining her so close to him that she could hardly breathe. Suddenly it
poised above the memory of an old book of Renan's, "The Abbess Juarre,"
in which the eminent skeptic had somewhat clumsily attempted to