It seemed to Dick that a very long time had elapsed since he stepped off the train; and one by one he went over every detail of incident which had occurred between that arrival and the present moment.  Strange as the facts were, he had no doubts.  He realized that before that night he had never known the deeps of wrath undisturbed in him; he had never conceived even a passing idea that it was possible for him to try to kill a man.  His right hand was swollen stiff, so sore that he could scarcely close it.  His knuckles were bruised and bleeding, and ached with a sharp pain.  Considering the thickness of his heavy glove, Gale was of the opinion that so to bruise his hand he must have struck Rojas a powerful blow.  He remembered that for him to give or take a blow had been nothing.  This blow to Rojas, however, had been a different matter.  The hot wrath which had been his motive was not puzzling; but the effect on him after he had cooled off, a subtle difference, something puzzled and eluded him.  The more it baffled him the more he pondered.  All those wandering months of his had been filled with dissatisfaction, yet he had been too apathetic to understand himself.  So he had not been much of a person to try.  Perhaps it had not been the blow to Rojas any more than other things that had wrought some change in him.

His meeting with Thorne; the wonderful black eyes of a Spanish girl; her appeal to him; the hate inspired by Rojas, and the rush, the blow, the action; sight of Thorne and Mercedes hurrying safely away; the girl’s hand pressing his to her heaving breast; the sweet fire of her kiss; the fact of her being alone with him, dependent upon him—­ all these things Gale turned over and over in his mind, only to fail of any definite conclusion as to which had affected him so remarkably, or to tell what had really happened to him.

Had he fallen in love with Thorne’s sweetheart?  The idea came in a flash.  Was he, all in an instant, and by one of those incomprehensible reversals of character, jealous of his friend?  Dick was almost afraid to look up at Mercedes.  Still he forced himself to do so, and as it chanced Mercedes was looking down at him.  Somehow the light was better, and he clearly saw her white face, her black and starry eyes, her perfect mouth.  With a quick, graceful impulsiveness she put her hand upon his shoulder.  Like her appearance, the action was new, strange, striking to Gale; but it brought home suddenly to him the nature of gratitude and affection in a girl of her blood.  It was sweet and sisterly.  He knew then that he had not fallen in love with her.  The feeling that was akin to jealousy seemed to be of the beautiful something for which Mercedes stood in Thorne’s life.  Gale then grasped the bewildering possibilities, the infinite wonder of what a girl could mean to a man.

The other haunting intimations of change seemed to be elusively blended with sensations—­the heat and thrill of action, the sense of something done and more to do, the utter vanishing of an old weary hunt for he knew not what.  Maybe it had been a hunt for work, for energy, for spirit, for love, for his real self.  Whatever it might be, there appeared to be now some hope of finding it.