no chance to win.'

"But I did not so cry to them. I waited. They would learn that their
system was worthless and throw it away. They would be content with
whatever happiness the gods gave them and not strive to wrest more away.

"I watched. I said nothing. The months continued to come and go, and
still the famine-edge of their love grew the sharper. Never did they dull
it with a permitted love-clasp. They ground and whetted it on self-denial,
and sharper and sharper it grew. This went on until even I doubted. Did
the gods sleep? I wondered. Or were they dead? I laughed to myself. The
man and the woman had made a miracle. They had outwitted God. They had
shamed the flesh, and blackened the face of the good Earth Mother. They
had played with her fire and not been burned. They were immune. They were
themselves gods, knowing good from evil and tasting not. 'Was this the way
gods came to be?' I asked myself. 'I am a frog,' I said. 'But for my mud-
lidded eyes I should have been blinded by the brightness of this wonder I
have witnessed. I have puffed myself up with my wisdom and passed judgment
upon gods.'

"Yet even in this, my latest wisdom, I was wrong. They were not gods.
They were man and woman--soft clay that sighed and thrilled, shot through
with desire, thumbed with strange weaknesses which the gods have not."

Carquinez broke from his narrative to roll another cigarette and to laugh
harshly. It was not a pretty laugh; it was like the mockery of a devil,
and it rose over and rode the roar of the storm that came muffled to our
ears from the crashing outside world.

"I am a frog," he said apologetically. "How were they to understand? They