He gritted his teeth; his hands clenched under his blankets; a surge of anger swept through him--for an instant it was almost hatred.

Was it possible that she--that woman who had been his wife--could chain him now, enslave his thoughts, fill his mind, his brain, his body, _after what had happened ?_ Why was it that he could not rise up and laugh and shrug his shoulders, and thank God that, after all, there had been no children?
Why couldn't he do that?
_Why?
Why ?_ A long time afterward he seemed to be asking that question.

He seemed to be crying it out aloud, over and over again, in a strange and mysterious wilderness; and at last he seemed to be very near to a girl who was standing on a rock waiting for him; a girl who bent toward him like a wonderful flower, her arms reaching out, her lips parted, her eyes shining through the glory of her windswept hair as she listened to his cry of "_Why?
Why ?_" He slept.

It was a deep, cool sleep; a slumber beside a shadowed pool, with the wind whispering gently in strange tree tops, and water rippling softly in a strange stream..