turn?" she asked quickly.
"Yes, I shall come back. It is not likely that I shall be absent longer than a couple of months, but I cannot expect to find you unchanged when I return. Many things may happen in two months."
She lifted her eyes, and he felt their soft glow through the summer dusk. "Odin," she said, her voice sweeter, more tender than he had ever heard it, "Odin, will you leave me, even for two months when I say to you as I say now, Beloved, I cannot live without you? Oh, does my happiness mean so little to you? If you must go take me with you."
She reached him both her hands, and as he clasped them in his own, drew him down upon the couch at her side, leaning her dark head against his shoulder. "Take me with you, take me with you, Odin," she begged. But he did not respond either to her words or to the caress. She could not see in that dim light that his eyes were full of tears, or know that he dared not trust his voice, and she felt hurt at what she deemed his indifference, hurt and surprised. How had she mistaken him so. All at once she remembered that in all their close and intimate companionship he had never once uttered a term of endearment, had never given her an unsought caress. Was it possible that he did not care, after all? A sudden fear gripped her heart, but she put it resolutely aside. If he did not care, he should.
"Dear," she said, leaning nearer, "you are breaking my heart, and you do not seem to care."
"No, not that; I would spare you pain if I could. It would have been better if I had not come into your lfie; I have only made you suffer, and I would give the world, if it were mine, to secure your lasting happiness."
"And yet it is such a little thing I ask of you — only to stay with me, to go on as we have begun, to live always as we have lived since that day you came first and taught me what it was to be alone. I had not known the meaning of soli- tude till you made me understand what companionship was. If you are absent but a day I am restless and wretched. When you go I count the hours, the.
minutes, till you come again. Can I live two months, not seeing your dear face? two long, weary, endless months? Oh, you cannot ask it, you cannot!"
Odin drew away from her. He clenched his hands till the nails cut into his palms. His face was white with the intensity of his emotion. It seemed to him, in that brief moment, that he lived and suffered centuries of fierce physical pain, and still fiercer mental agony. He cursed himself for his weakness, and drained to its bitter dregs the cup of unearned re- morse.
"Why do you shrink from me? Do you no longer love me?" questioned the girl, in her low, sweet tones.
He found his voice then. "Yes, I love you," he said. "If you knew me as I am, you would know that I am not worthy to touch the hem of your dress, but you shall not be the worse for my love. I must go now." He stood up and reached her his hand. She put her own shapely white one in it, and rose too. She was beginning at last to realize the futility of words, of looks, of kisses. He was going, and nothing she could do or say would stay him for a moment. Therefore she was silent and still. She did not even offer her lips when he said good-by; she did not watch him down the path to the beach as was her wont, but stood leaning against the door which he closed behind him as he went out, conscious only of the magnitude of her disappointment.
As for Odin, that night marked an epoch in his life. All through the sum- mer darkness and into the gray dawn he walked the beach below the pine grove and fought the battle which few men es- cape, but which alas, few men may win. But the victory brought him little joy, brought him, in fact, only bitterness of heart, and doubt and pain. Hope's smile he would not see, and the future held faint promise of happiness or even peace. But he knew that once for all he had vanquished the demons of the night, and might henseforth go on his way un- harmed by their red-lashing torments.
It was perhaps a month after Odin's departure, that Elise, restless and lonely, wandered aimlessly along the river
