I lifted my eyes for a moment in a glance towards Suzee and saw her make a scornful gesture at the prostrate figure.  The gold bracelets on her arm below the yellow silk sleeve shewed in the action a contrast to the old, worn clothing of the poorest material that her husband wore.

I rose to my feet and raised him up.

“Get up, I hate to see you kneel to me.  I have said I shall not take your wife.  As far as I am concerned, that is a promise.  I have said it.”

“Thank you,” he said, inclining his head, and then moved away, not without a certain dignity in his old form, lean and twisted though the work of years had made it.

I dropped back into my place where I had been sitting and watched the two figures before me almost in a dream.

He went up to the girl and spoke, apparently not unkindly, and some talk ensued.  Then I saw him bend down and take her wrist and drag her to her feet.

Suzee hung back as one sees a child hang back from a nurse, but she moved forward though unwillingly, and so at last they passed from my sight, through the grey trees and the weeping moss, the thin old man stepping doggedly forward, the pretty, gay-clothed childish little figure dragging back.

Then all was still.  The old grey wood was full of weird light, but the silence of the night had fallen on it.  Beast and bird and insect had sought their lair and nest and cranny.  Not a leaf moved.  I felt entirely alone.

“One never knows in life,” I thought, repeating my words to Morley.

I felt a keen sense of longing regret surge slowly, heavily through me.  How exquisitely sweet and perfect her beauty was!  And she had lain in my arms for that moment, one moment that was stamped into my brain in gold.  I put my head into my hands and shut out the dim grey wood from vision and recalled that moment.  It came back to me, the touch of her soft form, the smiling curve of the lips put up to me, the fire in the liquid depths of those almond eyes, the round throat delicate as polished ivory.  The extraordinary triumph of beauty over the senses came before my mind suddenly, presenting the problem that always puzzles and eludes me.

Why should certain lines and colours in pleasing the eye so intoxicate and inflame the brain?  For it is the brain to which beauty appeals.  Youth and health in a loved object are sufficient to capture the physical senses, but they do not fill the brain with that exaltation, that delirium of joy, that divine elation that sweeps up through us at the sight of beauty.  Divine fire, it seems to be lighted first in the glance of the eyes.

In an hour’s time I left the wood and walked slowly shipwards.  I felt tired and overstrained, exceedingly regretful, full of longing after that lovely vision that had come to me and that I had had to drive away.