.
Love is an inaugurator displaying his banners on captured peaks and
pressing forever to a new and more gracious enterprise, but the
victories of hate are gained in a ditch from which there is no horizon
visible and whence there does not go even one limping courier.

After Mary fled from the embrace of the great policeman he came to
think more closely of her than he had been used; but her image was
throned now in anger: she came to him like a dull brightness wherefrom
desolate thunder might roll at an instant. Indeed, she began to obsess
him so that not even the ministrations of his aunt nor the obeisances
of that pleasant girl, the name of whose boots was Fairybell, could
give him any comfort or wean him from a contemplation which sprawled
gloomily between him and his duties to the traffic. If he had not
discovered the lowliness of her quality his course might have been
simple and straightforward: the issue, in such an event, would have
narrowed to every man's poser--whether he should marry this girl or
that girl? but the arithmetic whereby such matters are elucidated
would at the last have eased his perplexity, and the path indicated
could have been followed with the fullest freedom on his part and
without any disaster to his self-love. If, whichever way his
inclination wavered, there was any pang of regret (and there was bound
to be) such a feeling would be ultimately waived by his reason or
retained as a memorial which had a gratifying savor. But the knowledge
of Mary's social inferiority complicated matters, for, although this
automatically put her out of the question as his wife, her subsequent
ill-treatment of himself had injected a virus to his blood which was
one-half a passion for her body and one-half a frenzy for vengeance.
He could have let her go easily enough if she had not first let him
go; for he read dismissal in her action and resented it as a trespass
on his own just prerogative.--He had but to stretch out his hand and
she would have dropped to it as tamely as a kitten, whereas now she
eluded his hand, would, indeed, have nothing to do with it; and this
could not be forgiven. He would gladly have beaten her into
submission, for what right has a slip of a girl to withstand the
advances of a man and a policeman? That is a crooked spirit demanding
to be straightened with a truncheon: but as we cannot decently, or
even peaceably, beat a girl until she is married to us he had to
relinquish that dear ide