Before arriving at Owlkirk, he made up his mind that, if she were not there, he would ride to the town of Broughill—­not in the hope of any news of her, but because there dwelt the only professional friend he had in the neighborhood—­one who sympathized with his view of things, and would not close his heart against him because he did not believe that this horrid, ugly, disjointed thing of a world had been made by a God of love.  Generally, he had been in the habit of dwelling on the loveliness of its developments, and the beauty of the gradual adaptation of life to circumstance; but now it was plainer to him than ever, that, if made at all, it was made by an evil being; “—­for,” he said, and said truly, “a conscious being without a heart must be an evil being.”  This was the righteous judgment of a man who could, by one tender, consoling word, have made the sun rise upon a glorious world of conscious womanhood, but would not say that word, and left that world lying in the tortured chaos of a slow disintegration.  This conscious being with a heart, this Paul Faber, who saw that a God of love was the only God supposable, set his own pride so far above love, that his one idea was, to satisfy the justice of his outraged dignity by the torture of the sinner!—­even while all the time dimly aware of rebuke in his soul.  If she should have destroyed herself, he said once and again as he rode, was it more than a just sacrifice to his wronged honor?  As such he would accept it.  If she had, it was best—­best for her, and best for him!  What so much did it matter!  She was very lovely!—­true—­but what was the quintessence of dust to him?  Where either was there any great loss?  He and she would soon be wrapped up in the primal darkness, the mother and grave of all things, together!—­no, not together; not even in the dark of nothingness could they two any more lie together!  Hot tears forced their way into his eyes, whence they rolled down, the lava of the soul, scorching his cheeks.  He struck his spurs into Ruber fiercely, and rode madly on.

At length he neared the outskirts of Broughill.  He had ridden at a fearful pace across country, leaving all to his horse, who had carried him wisely as well as bravely.  But Ruber, although he had years of good work left in him, was not in his first strength, and was getting exhausted with his wild morning.  For, all the way, his master, apparently unconscious of every thing else, had been immediately aware of the slightest slackening of muscle under him, the least faltering of the onward pace, and, in the temper of the savage, which wakes the moment the man of civilization is hard put to it, the moment he flagged, still drove the cruel spurs into his flanks, when the grand, unresenting creature would rush forward at straining speed—­not, I venture to think, so much in obedience to the pain, as in obedience to the will of his master, fresh recognized through the pain.