human qualities, he yet must have been counted a man of balance. If
sympathy, sentiment, were never his strong points, he was by no means
lacking in loyalty, kindliness, rightness of purpose. All his life,
achievement, achievement under the strictest canons of honesty, or
moral scruple, had been the motive urging him. He had seen neither to
the right nor to the left of these things.

Then had come the woman into his life and the lighting of those natural
fires which belong to all human life. He yielded to them, and the
suddenness of it all seemed to sweep away every cooler method which had
always governed him. There had been no thought, no calculation in his
yielding, such as might have been expected. He was the victim of his
own temperament. His powerful restraint had been suddenly relaxed.
And, for the time, he had been completely overwhelmed by the intensity
of his passion.

But this passion for the woman who had so suddenly entered his life was
merely the opening of vials of emotion hitherto held sealed. It was no
radical transformation. All that had been his before still remained,
buried perhaps for the moment under the avalanche of feeling, but
nevertheless still occupying its place. These things could not be
swept away. They could not be destroyed. They would remain when the
passionate fires had completely burned themselves out.

But the unlooked-for had happened. These fires had not been permitted
to burn themselves out. They had been extinguished, deluged out of
existence when the idol of his worship was flung headlong from its
pedestal by the complete revolt of his moral being. His prejudices,
his instincts, matured through years of effort, were the stronger part
of him, and the conflict was decided before it began. The shock of
discovery had brought a terrible reaction. His love was killed under
the blow. And though for a while the sense of overwhelming disaster
had been crushing, the measure of that disaster was taken swiftly. It
left him disillusioned, it left him harder, colder. But it left him
sane.

These things were not all, however. On this night he had approached
far nearer the hell which only a woman can create for a man than his
first discovery had borne him. The irony of it was perfect. Out of
her great love for him, solely in his interest, in a great desire to
shield him from a danger she saw threatening him, she had contrived to
convince him that she had been as ready t