No More Learning

' From that day she was always either singing wild and melancholy
songs or else watching him with that gaze of animal reverie.

Once he asked, 'How old are you? '

'A thousand years, for I am young. '

'I am so little to you,' he went on, 'and you are so much to me--dawn,
and sunset, tranquillity, and speech, and solitude. '

'Am I so much? ' she said; 'say it many times! ' and her eyes seemed to
brighten and her breast heaved with joy.

Often he would bring her the beautiful skins of animals, and she would
walk to and fro on them, laughing to feel their softness under her
feet. Sometimes she would pause and ask suddenly, 'Will you weep for me
when we have parted? ' and he would answer, 'I will die then'; and she
would go on rubbing her feet to and fro in the soft skin.

And so Dhoya grew tranquil and gentle, and Change seemed still to
have forgotten them, having so much on her hands. The stars rose and
set watching them smiling together, and the tides ebbed and flowed,
bringing mutability to all save them. But always everything changes,
save only the fear of Change.


III

One evening as they sat in the inner portion of the cave, watching
through the opening the paling of the sky and the darkening of the
leaves, and counting the budding stars, Dhoya suddenly saw stand before
him the dark outline of him he fought on the lake sand, and heard at
the same instant his companion sigh.

The stranger approached a little, and said, 'Dhoya, we have fought
heretofore, and now I have come to play chess against thee, for well
thou knowest, dear to the perfect warrior after war is chess.
'

'I know it,' answered Dhoya.

'And when we have played, Dhoya, we will name the stake. '

'Do not play,' whispered his companion at his side.

But Dhoya, being filled with his anger-fit at the sight of his enemy,
answered, 'I will play, and I know well the stake you mean, and I name
this for mine, that I may again have my knee on your chest and my hands
on your throat, and that you will not again change into a bundle
of wet reeds. ' His companion lay down on a skin and began to cry a
little. Dhoya felt sure of winning. He had often played in his boyhood,
before the time of his anger-fits, with his masters of the galley; and
besides, he could always return to his hands and his weapons once more.

Now the floor of the cave was of smooth, white sand, brought from
the seashore in his great Fomorian pitcher, to make it soft for his
beloved to walk upon; before it had been, as it now is, of rough clay.
On this sand the red-capped stranger marked out with his spear-point
a chess-board, and marked with rushes, crossed and recrossed each
alternate square, fixing each end of the rush in the sand, until a
complete board was finished of white and green squares, and then drew
from a bag large chessmen of mingled wood and silver. Two or three
would have made an armful for a child. Standing each at his end they
began to play. The game did not last long. No matter how carefully
Dhoya played, each move went against him. At last, leaping back from
the board, he cried, 'I have lost! ' The two spirits were standing
together at the entrance. Dhoya seized his spear, but slowly the
figures began to fade, first a star and then the leaves showed through
their forms.