word.  It was a fitting penance.  “There is no such thing as love in real life”:  he had told her that!  How he had stood, with all the power of his “divine soul” in his will, and told her,—­he,—­a man,—­that he put away her love from him then, forever!  He spared himself nothing,—­slurred over nothing; spurned himself, as it were, for the meanness, the niggardly selfishness in which he had wallowed that night.  How firm he had been! how kind! how masterful!—­pluming himself on his man’s strength, while he held her in his power as one might hold an insect, played with her shrinking woman’s nature, and trampled it under his feet, coldly and quietly!  She was in his way, and he had put her aside.  How the fine subtile spirit had risen up out of its agony of shame, and scorned him!  How it had flashed from the puny frame standing there in the muddy road despised and jeered at, and calmly judged him!  He might go from her as he would, toss her off like a worn-out plaything, but he could not blind her:  let him put on what face he would to the world, whether they called him a master among men, or a miser, or, as Knowles did to-night after he turned away, a scoundrel, this girl laid her little hand on his soul with an utter recognition:  she alone.  “She knew him for a better man than he knew himself that night”:  he remembered the words.

The night was growing murky and bitingly cold:  there was no prospect on the snow-covered hills, or the rough road at his feet with its pools of ice-water, to bring content into his face, or the dewy light into his eyes; but they came there, slowly, while he sat thinking.  Some old thought was stealing into his brain, perhaps, fresh and warm, like a soft spring air,—­some hope of the future, in which this child-woman came close to him and near.  It was an idle dream, only would taunt him when it was over, but he opened his arms to it:  it was an old friend; it had made him once a purer and better man than he could ever be again.  A warm, happy dream, whatever it may have been:  the rugged, sinister face grew calm and sad, as the faces of the dead change when loving tears fall on them.

He sighed wearily:  the homely little hope was fanning into life stagnant depths of desire and purpose, stirring his resolute ambition.  Too late?  Was it too late?  Living or dead she was his, though he should never see her face, by some subtile power that had made them one, he knew not when nor how.  He did not reason now,—­abandoned himself, as morbid men only do, to this delirious hope, simple and bonny, of a home, and cheerful warmth, and this woman’s love fresh and eternal:  a pleasant dream at first, to be put away at pleasure.  But it grew bolder, touched under-deeps in his nature of longing and intense passion; all that he knew or felt of power or will, of craving effort, of success in the world, drifted into this dream and became one with it.  He stood up, his vigorous frame starting into a nobler manhood, with the consciousness of right,—­with a willed assurance, that, the first victory gained, the others should follow.