THE ORDEAL OF IDA PENDRAGON
brown-bronze hair, as if a great sculptor had wished to
immortalise the sea in storm.
”Anoint me first,” he added, with a low sob, suddenly
clairvoyant of some vision of Christ and Magdalene.
" Need you die?"
They were seated, and her hand fell
on his lap.
“ Great men die never,”
“ Nor kind words," he retorted,
“ You have flattered me;
tu veux me perdre."
His English had no equivalent
She
gave a little shiver.
"What do you want?" he said, with the man’s alarm
when he at last meets the woman he may be able to love.
“Your body and soul," she answered solemnly; her eyes
sank into his, like a dagger into the belly of a faithless Kabyle
woman.
“ But beyond that, your secret!
You know life, yet
you can laugh from a mad heart
! ”
" It is easily said.
I am going to London to—morrow.
There they will make me bankrupt, because I love my neigh-
bour better than myself, and prosecute me for blasphemy and
indecency, because I uttered a few simple truths that every—
body knows."
"Why, my friend, you will be famous I " she cried.
" Aux
grands hommes la patrie reconnaissante
1 ”
“Probably,” said he.
“Already I run to a full page in the
American papers, my name intimately coupled with that of a
duke’s daughter whom I have never seen."
“ Good, good
l " she agreed—" so much for fame.
But are
you really great? Your laughter was better than Zarathoustra
Ξ
What is your real secret?
Why did you love your neigh—
bour?
Why did you speak the truth?
How did you come
to know anything at all well enough to be able to laugh as
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