You are as old as Egypt, and as young as yesterday,  
Oh, turn again and look again, for when you look I know
 
The dusk of death is but a dream, that dreaming, dies away
 
And leaves you with the lips I loved, three thousand years ago.
 
The mists of that forgotten dream, they fill your brooding eyes,
 
With veil on strange revealing veil that wavers, and is gone,
 
And still between the veiling mists, the dim, dead centuries rise,
 
And still behind the farthest veil, your burning soul burns on.
 
You are as old as Egypt, and as young as very Youth,
 
Before your still, eyes the ages come and go,
 
The dusk of death is but a dream that dims the face of Truth—
 
Oh, turn again, and look again, for when you look, I know.
 
When Elizabeth came to herself, the room was full of mist. Through the mist, she saw David’s face, and quite suddenly in these few minutes it had grown years older.
 
He . He seemed a long way off.
 
“Drink this.”
 
“What is it?” said Elizabeth faintly.
 
“Water.”
 
Elizabeth raised herself a little and drank. The faintness passed. She became aware that the collar of her dress was unfastened, and she sat up and began to fasten it.
 
David got up, too.
 
“I am all right.”
 
There was no mist before Elizabeth’s eyes now. They saw clearly, quite, quite clearly. She looked at David, and David’s face was grey—old and grey. So it had come. Now in this hour of physical weakness. The thing she .
 
To her own surprise, she felt no now. Only a great weariness. What could she say? What was she to say? All seemed useless—not worth while. But then there was David’s face, his grey, old face. She must do her best—not for her own sake, but for David’s.
 
She wondered a little that it should hurt him so much. It was not as though he loved her, or had ever loved her. Only of course this was a thing to cut a man, down to the very quick of his pride and his self-respect. It was that—of course it was that.
 
Whilst she was thinking, David spoke. He was by the table fingering the piece of string that lay there.
 
“Elizabeth, do you know why you fainted?” he said.
 
“Yes,” said Elizabeth, and said no more.
 
A sort of passed over David Blake.
 
“Then it’s true,” he said in a voice that was hardly a voice at all. There was a sound, and there were words. But it was not like a man speaking. It was like a long, quick breath of pain.
 
“Yes,” said Elizabeth. “It is true, David.”
 
There was a very great pity in her eyes.
 
“Oh, my God!” said David, and he sat down by the table and put his head in his hands. “Oh, my God!” he said again.
 
Elizabeth got up. She was trembling just a little, but she felt no faintness now. She put one hand on the mantelpiece, and so stood, waiting.
 
There was a very long silence, one of those profound silences which seem to break in upon a room and fill it. They overlie and out all the little sounds of every-day life and usage. Outside, people came and went, the traffic in the High Street came and went, but neither to David, nor to Elizabeth, did there come the smallest sound. They were enclosed in a silence that seemed to stretch unbroken, from one to another. It became an . To his dying day, when any one spoke of hell, David glimpsed a place of eternal silence, where burned for ever with a still unwavering flame.
 
He moved at last, slowly, like a man who has been in a trance. His head lifted. He got up, resting his weight upon his hands. Then he straightened himself. All his movements were like those of a man who is lifting an intolerably heavy load.
 
“Why did you marry me?” he asked in a tired voice, and then his tone hardened. “Who is the man? Who is he? Will he marry you if I divorce you?”
 
An unbearable of pity went through Elizabeth, and she turned her head sharply. David stopped looking at her.
 
She to be ashamed—oh, God!—Elizabeth ashamed—he could not look at her. He walked quickly to the window. Then turned back again because Elizabeth was speaking.
 
“David,” she said, in a low voice, “David, what sort of woman am I?”
 
A burst from David.
 
“You are a good woman. That’s just the damnable part of it. There are some women, when they do a thing like this, one only says they’ve done after their kind—they’re gone where they belong. When a good woman does it, it’s Hell—just Hell. And you’re a good woman.”
 
Elizabeth was looking down. She could not bear his face.
 
“And would you say I was a woman?” she said. “If I were to tell you the truth, would you believe me, David?”
 
“Yes,” said David at once. “Yes, I’d believe you. If you told me anything at all you’d tell me the truth. Why shouldn’t I believe you?”
 
“Because the truth is very unbelievable,” said Elizabeth.
 
David lifted his head and looked at her.
 
“Oh, you’ll not lie,” he said.
 
“Thank you,” said Elizabeth. After a moment’s pause, she went on.
 
“Will you sit down, David? I don’t think I can speak if you walk up and down like that. It’s not very easy to speak.”
 
He sat down in a big chair, that stood with its back to the window.
 
“David,” she said, “when we were in Switzerland, you asked me how I had put you to sleep. You asked me if I had hypnotised you. I said, No. I want to know if you believed me?”
 
“I don’t know what I believed,” said David wearily. The question appeared to him to be and unimportant.
 
“When you hypnotise a p............