358
MANY INVENTIONS
'lt was my fault,' said Leo.
'Ifow can there be any fault of yours that is not mine too?' said the Girl 'My time has come, but you will live longer, and . . .' The look in her eyes said all she could not say.
'Yes, I will remember that we are Gods, said Leo,
It is very hard, even for a child of the Zodiac, who has forgotten his Godhead, to see his wife dying slowly and to know that he cannot help her. The Girl told Leo in those last months of all that she had said and done among the wives and the babies at the back of the roadside performances, and Leo was astonished that he knew so little of her who had been so much to him. When she was dying she told him never to fight for pence or quarrel with the other singers; and, above all, to go on with his singing immediately after she was dead.
Then she died, and after he had buried her he went down the road to a village that he knew, and the people hoped that he would begin quarrelling with a new singer that had sprang up while he had been away. But Leo called him 'my brother" The new singer was newly married—and Leo knew it—and when he had finished singing, Leo straightened himself and sang the 'Song of the Girl, which he had made coming down the road. Every man who was married or hoped to be married, whatever his rank or colour, understood that song—even the bride leaning on the new husband's arm understood it too—and presently when the song ended, and Leo's heart was bursting in him, the men sobbed. 'That was a sad tale,' they said at last, 'now make us laugh.' Because Leo had