that seemed to have returned to the meagre uncertainty of young
childhood. To-day, her light hair was strained back from her wide
forehead, and knotted neatly under the brim of her rough straw hat. She
looked much older as she stood before me in the golden light.

"Will you come home with me this afternoon?" she asked directly. "It is
not far; perhaps it might amuse you."

I consented gladly. As we walked along the narrow paths that skirted the
roadside together, she turned to me, a sudden flush burning on her thin
face. "I am afraid you think I am very cruel to bring you out this hot
afternoon, but it is so long since I have talked to any one--so long! I
have read your books, and then I said last night to myself: 'If I do not
go over it all to some one--tell it aloud, from beginning to end--put it
into words, I shall go mad. She is a woman who could understand.' Yes,
when I saw your hands on the beach that day, all bruised inside, and on
one a little cut, where you had wrenched at the sand and stone before
you slept, I knew you were my escape. I am abject, but think of the
years I have been dying, here, if you despise me."

"No," I said, "it is not abject. Sometimes in one's life comes a crisis,
when one must snatch at some remedy, or else die, or go mad. If there
is not then something in us that makes us believe in a future, we, of
course, die; but I could never think it a cure myself, merely to be free
of the body, because I believe in the soul's immortality, and the body
is such a diversion! Once rid of it, with all its imperious clamor to be
fed and warmed--nothing but utter freedom to think--the grave has never
appealed to me as an escape. Madness is a shade better, perhaps; but
then that depends on the form of the illusion. For me the body has got
to work out the soul's agony. For you, words may bring relief. Try--try