wrong: but still, at the same time--! And assuredly, living seems to
me in everything a wasteful and inequitable process."

Thus Jurgen, while the others passed a very pleasant evening.

And presently, when the masque was over, Dorothy and Jurgen went out
upon the terrace, to the east of Bellegarde, and so came to an
unforgotten world of moonlight. They sat upon a bench of carved
stone near the balustrade which overlooked the highway: and the boy
and the girl gazed wistfully beyond the highway, over luminous
valleys and tree-tops. Just so they had sat there, as Jurgen
perfectly remembered, when Mother Sereda first used this Wednesday.

"My Heart's Desire," says Jurgen, "I am sad to-night. For I am
thinking of what life will do to us, and what offal the years will
make of you and me."

"My own sweetheart," says she, "and do we not know very well what is
to happen?" And Dorothy began to talk of all the splendid things
that Jurgen was to do, and of the happy life which was to be theirs
together.

"It is horrible," he said: "for we are more fine than we shall ever
be hereafter. We have a splendor for which the world has no
employment. It will be wasted. And such wastage is not fair."

"But presently you will be so and so," says she: and fondly predicts
all manner of noble exploits which, as Jurgen remembered, had once
seemed very plausible to him also. Now he had clearer knowledge as
to the capacities of the boy of whom he had thought so well.