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148 that, and nothing will prosper till you set your face in the direction whither your destiny points. You can take no other than me however much you may desire it. You need me and I need you. You may hate me and go on hating me and fighting me to the last, but you cannot escape me." "Elijah," said Mehalah, "escape you I will. Since I have known you, you have been mixed up with all the ills that have come upon us, I do not know how; but I seem to feel that you are like an evil wind or a blighting cloud passing over my life. I would look up and laugh, but I cannot, I turn hard, and hate the world—only because you are in it. It would be another world without you." "Why do you turn hard and hate the world? Because you are on a wrong road, you are battling against your destiny. All goes across with you, because you are across your proper path. Why do you hate me? Because you feel in your soul that you must sooner or later be mine, and your haughty will rebels against having your future determined for you. Yet I know it. The time is at hand when you will take me for better, for worse, for all life. We cannot live a moment the one without the other. If I were to die you would die too, you would rage and writhe against death, but it would come. I know it. Our lives are bound up together in one bundle, and the knife that cuts one string cuts the other also. Our souls are twins to love and to hate, to fondle and fight, till death us do part! Till death us do part " repeated Rebow scornfully. "Death can no more part us than life. We will live together and we will die together, and moulder away in one another's arms. The worm that gnaws me shall gnaw you. I think of you night and day. I cannot help it: it is my fate. I knew it was so the moment I saw you. I came here. I cannot keep away till you come to me to Red Hall." "I shall never go there again," said Mehalah sullenly. "Not before New Year?"

"Never."

He laughed. "She would swear to it, and yet at the New Year she will be there. And she will take me and be mine. For me she must and will love. It is her fate;