Moonchild

I must follow that harder path, the Path where he who would advance draws back." [332] He put spurs to his horse; half-an-hour later he saw the sunset glint upon the Eiffel Tower, and on the wings of one of those gallant birds that circled about it to keep watch and ward on Paris. The next morning he reported himself to the British authorities; and it was Lord Antony Bowling who presented him to the President and Commander- in-Chief. At the banquet he found himself an Officer of the Legion of Honour; but his brilliancy and buoyancy were gone. He dined in dull decorum. His thoughts still turned to the shameful corpse in the ditch by the wayside. He excused himself early, and left the Elysee. At the gate stood an automobile. In it sat Lisa la Giuffria. She jumped out and caught him by the shoulders. She poured out the tale of her madness, and its result, and its cure, her careful tracking of his movements, her determination to recover him at any cost. He listened in silence — the silence of incurable sadness. He shook his head. "Have you no word for me?" she cried impetuously, torn by her agony. "Have you no gift for me?" he answered. She understood. "Oh, you are human! you are human!" she cried. "I do not know what I am," he answered. "Yesterday I saw the end of the game — for one!" He told her in a few words of the horror on the roadside. "Go!" he said, "take that girl, Douglas's last victim, for your maid. Go to America; find the Child of the Moon. There may, or there may not be, other tasks for us to do; I know not — time will show." "I will, I will," she cried, "I will go now, quickly. Kiss me first!" Once again the tears gathered in the magician's [333] eyes; he understood, more deeply than he had ever done, the Sorrow of the Universe. He saw how utterly incompatible are all our human ideals with the Laws of Life. He took her slowly and gently in his arms; and he kissed her. But Lisa did not respond; she understood that this was not the man whom she had loved: this was a man that she had never known, one whom she dared not love. A man set apart, an idea to adore! She knew herself unworthy, and she withdrew herself. "I go," she said, "to seek the Child. Hail and farewell!" "Hail and farewell!" The girl mounted unsteadily into her car. Cyril Grey, his head bowed upon