dgment that the rain was only a threat.
The woods which bordered the meadows were blurred into a foreboding,
formless black, like a fringe of mourning, and the distant hills stood
sentinels at the sepulchre of nature.

Flowers, rearing their lovely necks for the first caress of the sun,
drooped disconsolately, their petals like the lips of a maid who has
waited in vain for the coming of her lover. Cattle in the fields moved
restlessly from one spot to another, finding the grass sour and
unpalatable. Through the damp-charged air the melancholy plaint of a
single cow sounded like the warning of rocks on a foggy coast.

In the air which was unstirred by a breath of wind the very buildings of
Roselawn seemed strangely motionless, with their roofs glistening in
their covering of moisture. And through an archway of trees the distant
spire of the church on the hill rose above the mist as a symbol held
aloft by some smoke-shrouded martyr of the past.

A hound with apologetic tail came stealthily from the house and made for
the cover of the stables. A horse rattled its headstall and pawed the
flooring with a restless hoof.

With a feeling of chill in the air, Selwyn rose at seven, and dressing
himself quickly, left the house for a walk before breakfast. His body
was fatigued from the long vigil of the mind which had kept at bay all
but a short hour of sleep, but he felt the necessity of exercise, as
though in the striding of limbs his torturing thoughts might lessen their
thumbscrew grip.

His feet grew heavy in the thick dew of the grass, as he plunged across
the fields to a path which led through the woods, where squirrels,
coquetting with the intruder, dared him to follow to the summit of the
oaks.

Heedless of the morning's melancholy, yet unconsciously soothed by its
calm solace, he went briskly forward, and his blood, sluggish from
inaction, leaped through his veins and coloured the shadowed pallor of
his face with a glow of warmth.

He had lost her.

That was the dominant note of his thoughts. What a jest the Fates had
prepared for him that the very moment when the incoherencies of his life
were crystallised by a great flash of truth--the very moment when he had
felt the overwhelming impulse to consecrate his life in a crusade against
Ignorance--that same instant should witness the snapping of the silk
threads of his love!

How scornful she had been--as if he were something unclean, too low a
thing for h