He turned a scorched and half-blinded face toward her.  “Ever since I was a boy, you might say,” said he.  “Even before my father and mother died.  We kept our own counsel.  We ran away, we two children.  They counseled me against it.  My people didn’t like the match, but I wouldn’t listen.  It came like some sort of judgment.  Not long after we were married it came—­the dreadful accident, with a run-away team—­and we saw,—­we knew—­in a little while—­that she simply lived like a child—­a plant—­That was ten years ago, ten centuries!—­ten thousand years of torture.  But I kept her.  I shielded her the best I knew how.  That was her place yonder, where the bars were—­you see.  Nobody knew any more.  It’s all alone, back in here.  Some said there was a funeral, out here.  Jamieson didn’t deny it, I did not deny it.  But she lived—­there!  Sally took care of her.  Sometimes she or the others were careless.  You heard once or twice.  Well, anyway, I couldn’t tell you.  It didn’t seem right—­to her.  And you were big enough not to ask.  I thank you!  Now you know.”

Still she was silent.  They dropped down, now weary, side by side, on the grass.

“Now you see into one bit of a human heart, don’t you?” said he bitterly.  The gray dawn showed his distorted and wounded face, scarred, blackened, burned, as at length he tried to look at her.

“I did the best I knew.  I knew it wasn’t right to feel as I did toward you—­to talk as I did—­but I couldn’t help it, I tell you, I just couldn’t help it!  I can’t help it now.  But I don’t think it’s wrong now, even—­here.  I was starved.  When I saw you,—­well, you know the rest.  I have got nothing to say.  It would be no use for me to explain.  I make no excuses for myself.  I have got to take my medicine.  Anyhow, part of it—­part of it is wiped out.”

“It is wiped out,” she repeated simply.  “The walls that stood there—­all of them—­are gone.  It is the act of fate, of God!  I had not known how awful a thing is life.  It is all—­wiped away by fire.  Those walls—­”

“But not my sins, not my selfishness, not the wrong I have done!  Even all that has happened to me, or may happen to me, wouldn’t be punishment enough for that.  Now you asked me if you were not my friend?  Of course you are not.  How could you be?”

“It would be easier now than ever before,” she said.  But he shook his head from side to side, slowly, dully, monotonously.

“No, no,” he said, “it would not be right,—­I would not allow it.”

“I remember now,” she said slowly, “how you hesitated.  It must have been agony for you.  I knew there was something, all the time.  Of course, I could not tell what.  But it must have been agony for you to offer to tell me—­of this.”

“Oh, I might have told you then.  Perhaps it would have been braver if I had.  I tried it a dozen times, but couldn’t.  I don’t pretend to say whether it was selfishness or cowardice, or just kindness to—­her.  If I ever loved her, it was so faint and far away—­but it isn’t right to say that, now.”