tell you," she said. "But for you I could not have borne it. You are
so good to me."

For answer he stroked with his withered hand the golden hair that fell
disordered about his withered knees. She raised her eyes to him; they
were filled with tears, but smiling.

"I cannot understand," she said. "I think sometimes that you and he
must have changed souls. He is hard and mean and cruel, as you used
to be." She laughed, and the arms around him tightened for a moment.
"And now you are kind and tender and great, as once he was. It is as
if the good God had taken away my lover from me to give to me a
father."

"Listen to me, Christina," he said. "It is the soul that is the man,
not the body. Could you not love me for my new soul?"

"But I do love you," answered Christina, smiling through her tears.

"Could you as a husband?" The firelight fell upon her face.
Nicholas, holding it between his withered hands, looked into it long
and hard; and reading what he read there, laid it back against his
breast and soothed it with his withered hand.

"I was jesting, little one," he said. "Girls for boys, and old women
for old men. And so, in spite of all, you still love Jan?"

"I love him," answered Christina. "I cannot help it."

"And if he would, you would marry him, let his soul be what it may?"