He laid the bill of sale on the table; it was an altogether practical matter on which he sat in judgment, but he was going to do nothing rashly.  A plain business document:  he took Dr. Knowles’s share in the factory; the payments made with short intervals; John Herne was to be his indorser:  it needed only the names to make it valid.  Plain enough; no hint there of the tacit understanding that the purchase-money was a wedding dowry; even between Herne and himself it never was openly put into words.  If he did not marry Miss Herne, the mill was her father’s; that of course must be spoken of, arranged to-morrow.  If he took it, then? if he married her?  Holmes had been poor, was miserably poor yet, with the position and habits of a man of refinement.  God knows it was not to gratify those tastes that he clutched at this money.  All the slow years of work trailed up before him, that were gone,—­of hard, wearing work for daily bread, when his brain had been starving for knowledge, and his soul dulled, debased with sordid trading.  Was this to be always?  Were these few golden moments of life to be traded for the bread and meat he ate?  To eat and drink,—­was that what he was here for?

As he paced the floor mechanically, some vague recollection crossed his brain of a childish story of the man standing where the two great roads of life parted.  They were open before him now.  Money, money,—­he took the word into his heart as a miser might do.  With it, he was free from these carking cares that were making his mind foul and muddy.  If he had money!  Slow, cool visions of triumphs rose before him outlined on the years to come, practical, if Utopian.  Slow and sure successes of science and art, where his brain could work, helpful and growing.  Far off, yet surely to come,—­surely for him,—­a day to come when a pure social system should be universal, should have thrust out its fibres of light knitting into one the nations of the earth, when the lowest slave should find its true place and rightful work, and stand up, knowing itself divine.  “To insure to every man the freest development of his faculties”:  he said over the hackneyed dogma again and again, while the heavy, hateful years of poverty rose before him that had trampled him down.  “To insure to him the freest development,” he did not need to wait for St. Simon, or the golden year, he thought with a dreary gibe; money was enough, and—­Miss Herne.

It was curious, that, when this woman, whom he saw every day, came up in his mind, it was always in one posture, one costume.  You have noticed that peculiarity in your remembrance of some persons?  Perhaps you would find, if you looked closely, that in that look or indelible gesture which your memory has caught there lies some subtile hint of the tie between your soul and theirs.  Now, when Holmes had resolved coolly to weigh this woman, brain, heart, and flesh, to know how much of a hindrance she would be, he could only see her, with his artist’s sense, as delicate