tapering limbs; and, in her brain-picture, out of the shadow of the room
came one with sallow face, deep-lined, the cheeks drawn into hollows, and a
mouth smiling quiveringly. He stretched out his hand. And the mother drew
back, and cried, "Who are you?" He answered nothing; and she looked up
between his eyelids. And she said, "What can you give the child--health?"
And he said, "The man I touch, there wakes up in his blood a burning fever,
that shall lick his blood as fire. The fever that I will give him shall be
cured when his life is cured."

"You give wealth?"

He shook his head. "The man whom I touch, when he bends to pick up gold,
he sees suddenly a light over his head in the sky; while he looks up to see
it, the gold slips from between his fingers, or sometimes another passing
takes it from them."

"Fame?"

He answered, "likely not. For the man I touch there is a path traced out
in the sand by a finger which no man sees. That he must follow. Sometimes
it leads almost to the top, and then turns down suddenly into the valley.
He must follow it, though none else sees the tracing."

"Love?"

He said, "He shall hunger for it--but he shall not find it. When he
stretches out his arms to it, and would lay his heart against a thing he
loves, then, far off along the horizon he shall see a light play. He must
go towards it. The thing he loves will not journey with him; he must
travel alone. When he presses somewhat to his burning heart, crying,