ent of
Truedale in the past:

"Thy story hath been written long since.
Thy part is to read and interpret."

Over and over again he read the words and pondered upon his own change
of mind. Youth, no matter how lean and beggared it may be, craves and
insists upon conflict--upon the personal loss and gain. But as time
takes one into its secrets, the soul gets the wider--Truedale now was
sure it was the wider--outlook. Having fought--because the fight was
part of the written story--the craving for victory, of the lesser sort,
dwindled, while the higher call made its appeal. To be part of the
universal; to look back upon the steps that led up, or even down, and
hold the firm belief that here, or elsewhere--what mattered in the
mighty chain of many links--the "interpretation" told!

Truedale came to the conclusion that fatalism was no weak and spineless
philosophy, but one for the making of strong souls.

Failure, even wrong, might they not, if unfettered by the narrow
limitations of here and now, prove miracle-working elements?

Then the effect upon others entered into Truedale's musings as it had in
the beginning. The "stories" of others! He leaned his head at this
juncture upon his clasped hands and thought of Nella-Rose! Thought of
her as he always did--tenderly, gently, but as holding no actual part in
his real life. She was like something that had gained power over an
errant and unbridled phase of his past existence. He could not make her
real in the sense of the reality of the men, women, and affairs that now
sternly moulded and commanded him. She was--she always would be to
him--a memory of something lovely, dear, but elusive. He could no longer
place and fix her. She belonged to that strange period of his life when,
in the process of finding himself, he had blindly plunged forward
without stopping to count the cost or waiting for clear-sightedness.

"What has she become?" he thought, sitting apart with his secret work.
And then most fervently he hoped that what Lynda had once suggested
might indeed be true. He prayed, as such men do pray, that the
experience which had enabled him to understand himself and life better
might also have given Nella-Rose a wider, freer space in which to play
her chosen part.

He recalled his knowledge of the hill-women as Jim White had described
them--women to whom love, in its brightest aspect, is denied. Surely
Nella-Rose had caught a glimpse more radiant than they. Had it p