He faced Father Roland again.

“Did you ever hear of a man losing himself?” he asked.  “I don’t mean in the woods, or in a desert, or by going mad.  I mean in the other way—­heart, body, soul; losing one’s grip, you might call it, until there was no earth to stand on.  Did you?”

“Yes—­many years ago—­I knew of a man who lost himself in that way,” replied the Missioner, straightening in his seat.  “But he found himself again.  And this friend of yours?  I am interested.  This is the first time in three years that I have been down to the edge of civilization, and what you have to tell will be different—­vastly different from what I know.  If you are betraying nothing would you mind telling me his story?”

“It is not a pleasant story,” warned the younger man, “and on such a night as this——­”

“It may be that one can see more clearly into the depths of misfortune and tragedy,” interrupted the Missioner quietly.

A faint flush rose into David Raine’s pale face.  There was something of nervous eagerness in the clasp of his fingers upon his knees.

“Of course, there is the woman,” he said.

“Yes—­of course—­the woman.”

“Sometimes I haven’t been quite sure whether this man worshipped the woman or the woman’s beauty,” David went on, with a strange glow in his eyes.  “He loved beauty.  And this woman was beautiful, almost too beautiful for the good of one’s soul, I guess.  And he must have loved her, for when she went out of his life it was as if he had sunk into a black pit out of which he could never rise.  I have asked myself often if he would have loved her if she had been less beautiful—­even quite plain, and I have answered myself as he answered that question, in the affirmative.  It was born in him to worship wherever he loved at all.  Her beauty made a certain sort of completeness for him.  He treasured that.  He was proud of it.  He counted himself the richest man in the world because he possessed it.  But deep under his worship of her beauty he loved her.  I am more and more sure of that, and I am equally sure that time will prove it—­that he will never rise again with his old hope and faith out of that black pit into which he sank when he came face to face with the realization that there were forces in life—­in nature perhaps, more potent than his love and his own strong will.”

Father Roland nodded.

“I understand,” he said, and he sank back farther in his corner by the window, so that his face was shrouded a little in shadow.  “This other man loved a woman, too.  And she was beautiful.  He thought she was the most beautiful thing in the world.  It is great love that makes beauty.”

“But this woman—­my friend’s wife—­was so beautiful that even the eyes of other women were fascinated by her.  I have seen her when it seemed she must have come fresh from the hands of angels; and at first, when my friend was the happiest man in the world, he was fond of telling her that it must have been the angels who put the colour in her face and the wonderful golden fires in her shining hair.  It wasn’t his love for her that made her beautiful.  She was beautiful.”