I divined the cause, and dreaded it — that is, I dreaded
the revelation he would sooner or later make. For I
guessed— I ftnewj— what it involved and whom. I asked
no questions. But I noticed that at a certain point our
conversations suddenly stopped, he changed the subject,
or withdrew abruptly into silence. And something
sinister gripped my heart. Behind it, closely connected
in some undiscovered manner, lay two things I have
already mentioned: the woman, and the worship.
This reconstruction of our past together, meanwhile,
was — for a pair of schoolboys— a thrilling pursuit that
never failed to absoii). Stone by stone we built it up.
After often missing one another, sometimes by a century,
sometimes by a mere decade or so, our return at lait



40 Julius LeVallon

had chimed, and we found ourselves on earth again. We
had inevitably come together. There was no such thing
as missing eventually, it seemed. Debts must be dis-
charged between those who had incurred them. And,
chief among these mutual obligations, I gathered, were
certain dealings we had together in connection with
some form of Nature worship, during a section he
referred to as our "Temple Days."

The character of these dealings was one of those
secret things that he would not disclose ; he knew, but
would not speak of it ; and alone I could not " dig it up."
Moreover, the effect upon me here was decidedly a mixed
one, for while there was great beauty in these Temple
Days, there lurked behind this portion of them— terror.
