stony fingers clasped round my legs, and forehead resting on my

knees; and there would I sit, unmoving, immovable, for many a
thousand years to come--I, no longer I, in a universe where she

was not, and God was not.
The days went by, and to others grouped themselves into weeks and

months; to me they were only days--not Saturday, Sunday, Monday,
but nameless. They were so many and their sum so great that all

my previous life, all the years I had existed before this
solitary time, now looked like a small island immeasurably far

away, scarcely discernible, in the midst of that endless desolate
waste of nameless days.

My stock of provisions had been so long consumed that I had
forgotten the flavour of pulse and maize and pumpkins and purple

and sweet potatoes. For Nuflo's cultivated patch had been
destroyed by the savages--not a stem, not a root had they left:

and I, like the sorrowful man that broods on his sorrow and the
artist who thinks only of his art, had been improvident and had

consumed the seed without putting a portion into the ground.
Only wild food, and too little of that, found with much seeking

and got with many hurts. Birds screamed at and scolded me;
branches bruised and thorns scratched me; and still worse were

the angry clouds of waspish things no bigger than flies.
Buzz--buzz! Sting- -sting! A serpent's tooth has failed to kill

me; little do I care for your small drops of fiery venom so that
I get at the spoil--grubs and honey. My white bread and purple

wine! Once my soul hungered after knowledge; I took delight in
fine thoughts finely expressed; I sought them carefully in

printed books: now only this vile bodilyhunger, this eager
seeking for grubs and honey, and ignoble war with little things!

A bad hunter I proved after larger game. Bird and beast despised
my snares, which took me so many waking hours at night to invent,

so many daylight hours to make. Once, seeing a troop of monkeys
high up in the tall trees, I followed and watched them for a long

time, thinking how royally I should feast if by some strange
unheard-of accident one were to fall disabled to the ground and

be at my mercy. But nothing impossible happened, and I had no
meat. What meat did I ever have except an occasional fledgling,

killed in its cradle, or a lizard, or small tree-frog detected,
in spite of its green colour, among the foliage? I would roast

the little green minstrel on the coals. Why not? Why should he
live to tinkle on his mandolin and clash his airy cymbals with no

appreciative ear to listen? Once I had a different and strange
kind of meat; but the starved stomach is not squeamish. I found

a serpent coiled up in my way in a small glade, and arming myself
with a long stick, I roused him from his siesta and slew him

without mercy. Rima was not there to pluck the rage from my
heart and save his evil life. No coral snake this, with slim,

tapering body, ringed like a wasp with brilliant colour; but
thick and blunt, with lurid scales, blotched with black; also a

broad, flat, murderous head, with stony, ice-like, whity-blue
eyes, cold enough to freeze a victim's blood in its veins and

make it sit still, like some wide-eyed creature carved in stone,
waiting for the sharp, inevitable stroke--so swift at last, so

long in coming. "O abominable flat head, with icy-cold,
humanlike, fiend-like eyes, I shall cut you off and throw you

away!" And away I flung it, far enough in all conscience: yet I
walked home troubled with a fancy that somewhere, somewhere down

on the black, wet soil where it had fallen, through all that
dense, thornytangle and millions of screening leaves, the white,

lidless, living eyes were following me still, and would always be
following me in all my goings and comings and windings about in

the forest. And what wonder? For were we not alone together in
this dreadfulsolitude, I and the serpent, eaters of the dust,

singled out and cursed above all cattle? HE would not have
bitten me, and I--faithless cannibal!--had murdered him. That

cursed fancy would live on, worming itself into every crevice of
my mind; the severed head would grow and grow in the night-time

to something monstrous at last, the hellish white lidless eyes
increasing to the size of two full moons. "Murderer! murderer!"

they would say; "first a murderer of your own fellow
creatures--that was a small crime; but God, our enemy, had made

them in His image, and He cursed you; and we two were together,
alone and apart--you and I, murderer! you and I, murderer!"

I tried to escape the tyrannous fancy by thinking of other things
and by making light of it. "The starved, bloodless brain," I

said, "has strange thoughts." I fell to studying the dark,
thick, blunt body in my hands; I noticed that the livid, rudely

blotched, scaly surface showed in some lights a lovely play of
prismatic colours. And growing poetical, I said: "When the wild

west wind broke up the rainbow on the flying grey cloud and
scattered it over the earth, a fragmentdoubtless fell on this

reptile to give it that tender celestial tint. For thus it is
Nature loves all her children, and gives to each some beauty,

little or much; only to me, her hated stepchild, she gives no
beauty, no grace. But stay, am I not wronging her? Did not

Rima, beautiful above all things, love me well? said she not
that I was beautiful?"

"Ah, yes, that was long ago," spoke the voice that mocked me by
the pool when I combed out my tangled hair. "Long ago, when the

soul that looked from your eyes was not the accursed thing it is
now. Now Rima would start at the sight of them; now she would

fly in terror from their insane expression."
"O spiteful voice, must you spoil even such appetite as I have

for this fork-tongued spotty food? You by day and Rima by
night--what shall I do--what shall I do?"

For it had now come to this, that the end of each day brought not
sleep and dreams, but waking visions. Night by night, from my

dry grass bed I beheld Nuflo sitting in his old doubled-up
posture, his big brown feet close to the white ashes--sitting

silent and miserable. I pitied him; I owed him hospitality; but
it seemed intolerable that he should be there. It was better to

shut my eyes; for then Rima's arms would be round my neck; the
silky mist of her hair against my face, her flowerybreath mixing

with my breath. What a luminous face was hers! Even with
closeshut eyes I could see it vividly, the translucent skin

showing the radiant rose beneath, the lustrous eyes, spiritual
and passionate, dark as purple wine under their dark lashes.

Then my eyes would open wide. No Rima in my arms! But over
there, a little way back from the fire, just beyond where old

Nuflo had sat brooding a few minutes ago, Rima would be standing,
still and pale and unspeakably sad. Why does she come to me from

the outside darkness to stand there talking to me, yet never once
lifting her mournful eyes to mine? "Do not believe it, Abel; no,

that was only a phantom of your brain, the What-I-was that you
remember so well. For do you not see that when I come she fades

away and is nothing? Not that--do not ask it. I know that I
once refused to look into your eyes, and afterwards, in the cave

at Riolama, I looked long and was happy--unspeakably happy! But
now--oh, you do not know what you ask; you do not know the sorrow

that has come into mine; that if you once beheld it, for very
sorrow you would die. And you must live. But I will wait

patiently, and we shall be together in the end, and see each
other without disguise. Nothing shall divide us. Only wish not

for it soon; think not that death will ease your pain, and seek
it not. Austerities? Good works? Prayers? They are not seen;

they are not heard, they are less-than nothing, and there is no
intercession. I did not know it then, but you knew it. Your life

was your own; you are not saved nor judged! acquit
yourself--undo that which you have done, which Heaven cannot

undo--and Heaven will say no word nor will I. You cannot, Abel,