No More Learning

' Dhoya answered him no word, and the other rose and
again thrust at him with the spear. They fought to and fro upon the
sands until the dawn touched with olive the distant sky, and then his
anger-fit, long absent, fell on Dhoya, and he closed with his enemy and
threw him, and put his knee on his chest and his hands on his throat,
and would have crushed all life out of him, when lo! he held beneath
his knee no more than a bundle of reeds.

Nearing home in the early morning he heard the voice he loved, singing:

Full moody is my love and sad,
His moods bow low his sombre crest,
I hold him dearer than the glad,
And he shall slumber on my breast.

My love hath many an evil mood,
Ill words for all things soft and fair,
I hold him dearer than the good,
My fingers feel his amber hair.

No tender wisdom floods the eyes
That watch me with their suppliant light--
I hold him dearer than the wise,
And for him make me wise and bright.

And when she saw him she cried, 'An old mortal song heard floating from
a tent of skin, as we rode, I and mine, through a camping-place at
night. ' 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.