He laughed joyously.

"Take off your veil," he said.

"No, no--not yet. I want to tell you first--"

"To tell me what?"

"That my--that my--Robin, I'm not beautiful now."

Her voice quivered again.

"You tell me so," he answered.

"It's true."

"I don't believe it."

"But," she began, almost desperately, "it's true, Robin, oh, it's true!

When Fritz--"

She stopped. She was choking.

"Oh--Fritz!" he said with scathing contempt.

"No, no, listen! You've got to listen." She put her hand on his arm.

"When Fritz saw me--afterwards he--he was afraid of me. He couldn't speak to me. He just looked and said--and said--"

Tears were running down behind the veil. He put up his hand to hers, which still touched his arm.

"Don't tell me what he said. What do I care? Viola, you know I've almost longed for this--no, not that, but--can't you understand that when one loves a woman one loves something hidden, something mystical? It's so much more than a face that one loves. One doesn't want to live in a house merely because it's got a nice front door."

He laughed again as if he were half ashamed of his own feeling.

"Is that true, Robin?"

The sound of her voice told him that he need not be afraid to be passionate.

"Sit down here," he said.

They had reached an old stone bench at the end of the garden where the woods began. Two cypresses towered behind it, sad-looking sentinels.

There was a gap in the wall here through which the lake could be seen as one sat upon the bench.

"I want to make you understand, to make you trust me."

She sat down without speaking, and he sat beside her.

"Viola," he said, "there are many men who love only what they can see, and never think of the spirit behind it. They care only for a woman's body. For them the woman's body is the woman. I put it rather brutally.

What they can touch, what they can kiss, what they can hold in their arms is all to them. They are unconscious of the distant, untameable woman, the lawless woman who may be free in the body that is captive, who may be unknown in the body that is familiar, who may even be pure in the body that is defiled as she is immortal though her body is mortal.

These men love the flesh only. But there are at least some men who love the spirit. They love the flesh, too, because it manifests the spirit, but to them the spirit is the real thing. They are always stretching out their arms to that. The hearth can't satisfy them. They demand the fire.

The fire, the fire!" he repeated, as if the word warmed him. "I've so often thought of this, imagined this. It's as if I'd actually foreseen it."

He spoke with gathering excitement.

"What?" she murmured.

"That some day the woman men--those men I've spoken of--loved would be struck down, and the real woman, the woman of the true beauty, the mystic, the spirit woman, would be set free. If this had not happened you could perhaps never have known who was the man that really loved you--that loved the real you, the you that lies so far beyond the flesh, the you that has sung and suffered--"

"Ah, suffered!" she said.

But there was a note of something that was not sorrow in her voice.

"If you want to know the man I mean," Robin said, "lift up your veil, Viola."

She sat quite still for a moment, a moment that seemed very long. Then she put up both hands to her head, untied the veil and let it fall into her lap. He looked at her, and there was silence. They heard the bees humming. There were many among the roses on the wall. She had turned her face fully towards him, but she kept her eyes on the veil that lay in her lap. It was covered with little raised black spots. She began to count them. As the number mounted she felt her body turning gradually cold.

"Fifteen--sixteen-seventeen"--she formed the words with her lips, striving to concentrate her whole soul upon this useless triviality--"eighteen--nineteen--twenty."

Little drops of moisture came out upon her temples. Still the silence continued. She knew that all this time Robin was looking into her face.

She felt his eyes like two knives piercing her face.

"Twenty-one--twenty-two--"

"Viola!"

He spoke at last and his voice was extraordinary. It was husky, and sounded desperate and guilty.

"Well?" she said, still looking at the spots.

"Now you know the man I spoke of."

Yes, it was a desperate voice and hard in its desperation.

"You mean that you are the man?"

Still she did not look up. After a pause she heard him say:

"Yes, that I am the man."

Then she looked up. His face was scarlet, like a face flushed with guilt. His eyes met hers with a staring glance, yet they were furtive.

His hands were clenched on his knees. When she looked at him he began to smile.

"Viola," he said, "Viola."

He unclenched his hands and put them out towards her, as if to take her hands. She did not move.

"Poor Robin!" she said.

"Poor--but--what do you mean?" he stammered.