caught in a net of smiles and glances, and the very impossibility of there being any question of love between them drew them together: nobody entertained the faintest suspicion of their relationship to each other, and they met without emotion, without fear and without desire. Yet little by little desire crept into that love of theirs, chaste and pure as a pool of still water beneath a wall that suddenly crumbles and falls in ruins.
All these things passed through his mind as he probed deep into his conscience and found the truth. He knew that from the first glance he had desired the woman, from the first glance he had possessed her in his heart, and all the rest had been only self-deception whereby he had sought to justify himself in his own eyes.
Thus it was, and he was forced to acknowledge the truth. Thus it was, because it is man's nature to suffer, to love, to find his mate and have her and to suffer again; to do good and receive it, to do evil and receive it, this is the life of man. Yet all his reflec-
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