would live. And the Fourth—well, she had that one where nothing mortal now could blot or stain him. For ever.
"In the morning" . . . it was morning already. As he lay down on the couch he could feel, rather than see, the first dim fumes of day. The brief hush and interim was over, the pink moon had gone. The last of the crickets flung the password to the birds, treetops began to warble. A new link in the endless chain picked up the tension of life. Somewhere over the hillside a cock was crowing his brisk undoubting cheer.
So this was what they called victory. What was the saying? One more such victory. . . . Not even those last merciful words of hers could acquit him of his own damnation. All the irony, none of the bliss. The world hung about his neck like the Mariner's dead albatross. The charnel corpse clung to him, rotting, with bony skull and jellied festering eye. But even the Mariner was worthier, having killed the bird; he himself had only maimed it. There would not even be the sharp numbing surgery of good-bye. Endlessly, through long perspectives of pain, he could see themselves meeting, smiling and parting, to encounter once more round the next corner of mem-
