he woods, seeking some inviolable shelter; nor was I conscious of
physical effort until I found myself panting near the crest of the ridge
where there was a pasture, which some ancient glacier had strewn with
great boulders. Beside one of these I sank. Heralded by the deep tones
of bells, two steers appeared above the shoulder of a hill and stood
staring at me with bovine curiosity, and fell to grazing again. A fleet
of white clouds, like ships pressed with sail, hurried across the sky as
though racing for some determined port; and the shadows they cast along
the hillsides accentuated the high brightness of the day, emphasized
the vivid and hateful beauty of the landscape. My numbness began to be
penetrated by shooting pains, and I grasped little by little the fulness
of my calamity, until I was in the state of wild rebellion of one whom
life for the first time has foiled in a supreme desire. There was no
fate about this thing, it was just an absurd accident. The operation of
the laws of nature had sent a man to the ground: another combination of
circumstances would have killed him, still another, and he would have
arisen unhurt. But because of this particular combination my happiness
was ruined, and Nancy's! She had not expected me to understand. Well,
I didn't understand, I had no pity, in that hour I felt a resentment
almost amounting to hate; I could see only unreasoning superstition in
the woman I wanted above everything in the world. Women of other days
had indeed renounced great loves: the thing was not unheard of. But that
this should happen in these times--and to me! It was unthinkable
that Nancy of all women shouldn't be emancipated from the thralls of
religious inhibition! And if it wasn't "conscience," what was it?

Was it, as she said, weakness, lack of courage to take life when it
was offered her?... I was suddenly filled with the fever of composing
arguments to change a decision that appeared to me to be the result of
a monstrous caprice and delusion; writing them out, as they occurred
to me, in snatches on the backs of envelopes--her envelopes. Then
I proceeded to make the draft of a letter, the effort required for
composition easing me until the draft was finished; when I started for
the hotel, climbing fences, leaping streams, making my way across
rock faces and through woods; halting now and then as some reenforcing
argument occurred to me to write it into my draft at the proper place
until the sheets