All was very still.  The moonlight touched to silver the snow upon the mountains; the sound of the leaping river was like a distant flute; the wind was rising with long, wavelike sounds.  Honora lingered in the doorway, looking and listening.  Her heart was big with pity—­pity for that disheartened man whose buoyancy and self-love had been so deeply wounded, pity for those wandering, angry, aimless men and women who might have rested secure in his guardianship; pity for all the hot, misguided hearts of men and women.  Pity, too, for the man with the most impetuous heart of them all, who wandered in some foreign land with a woman whose beauty had been his lure and his undoing.  Yes, she had been given grace in those days, when she seemed to stand face to face with death, to pity even David and Mary!

She walked with a slow firm step up to her room, holding her head high.  She had learned trust as well as compassion.  She trusted Karl and the issue of his sorrow.  She even trusted the issue of her own sorrow, which, a short time before, had seemed so shameful.  She threw wide her great windows, and the wind and the moonlight filled her chamber.

* * * * *

Two days later Karl Wander and Honora Fulham rode together to the village, now dismantled and desolate.

“I remember,” said Karl, “what a boyish pride I took in the little town at first, Honora, to have built it, and had it called after me and all.  Such silly fools as men are, trying to perpetuate themselves by such childish methods.”

“Perpetuation is an instinct with us,” said Honora calmly, “Immortality is our greatest hope.  I’m so thankful I have my children, Karl.  They seem to carry one’s personality on, you know, no matter how different they actually may be from one’s self.”

“Oh, yes,” said Karl, with a short sigh, “you’re right there.  You’ve a beautiful brace of babies, Honora.  I believe I’ll have to ask you to appoint me their guardian.  I must have some share in them.  It will give me a fresh reason for going on.”

“Are you a trifle short of reasons for going on, Karl?” Honora asked gently, averting her look so that she might not seem to be watching him.

“Yes, I am,” he admitted frankly.  “Although, now that the worst of my chagrin is over at having failed so completely in the pet scheme of my life, I can feel my fighting blood getting up again.  I’m going to make a success of the town of Wander yet, my cousin, and those three mines that lie there so silently are going to hum in the old way.  You’ll see a string of men pouring in and out of those gates yet, take my word for it.  But as for me, I proceed henceforth on a humbler policy.”

“Humbler?  Isn’t it humble to be kind, Karl?  That’s what you were first and last—­kind.  You were forever thinking of the good of your people.”

“It was outrageously insolent of me to do it, my cousin.  Who am I that I should try to run another man’s affairs?  How should I know what is best for him—­isn’t he the one to be the judge of that? patronage, patronage, that’s what they can’t stand—­that’s what natural overmen like myself with amiable dispositions try to impose on those we think inferior to ourselves.  We can’t seem to comprehend that the way to make them grow is to leave them alone.”