life
and that of other men I know--that weakened me so with Kitty?" He
canvassed his own character, as a third person might have done.

The Christian, no doubt, would say that his married life had failed
because God had been absent from it, because there had been in it no
consciousness of higher law, of compelling grace.

Ashe pondered what such things might mean. "The Christian--in
speculative belief--fails under the challenge of life as often as other
men. Surely it depends on something infinitely more primitive and
fundamental than Christianity?--something out of which Christianity
itself springs? But this something--does it really exist--or am I only
cheating myself by fancying it? Is it, as all the sages have said, the
pursuit of some eternal good, the identification of the self with
it--the 'dying to live'? And is this the real meaning at the heart of
Christianity?--at the heart of all religion?--the everlasting meaning,
let science play what havoc it please with outward forms and
statements?"

Had he, perhaps, <i>doubted the soul?</i>

He groaned aloud. "O my God, what matter that I should grow wise--if
Kitty is lost and desolate?"

And he trampled on his own thoughts--feeling them a mere hypocrisy and
offence.

As they left the Gondo ravine and began to climb the zigzag road to the
Simplon inn, the storm grew still wilder, and the driver, with set lips
and dripping face, urged his patient beasts against a deluge. The road
ran rivers; each torrent, carefully channelled, that passed beneath it
brought down wood and soil in choking abundance; and Ashe watched the
downward push of the rain on the high, exposed banks above the carriage.
Once they passed a fragment of road which had been washed away; the
driver pointing to it said something sulkily about "<i>frane"</i> on the
"other side."

This bad moment, however, proved to be the last and worst, and when they
emerged upon the high valley in which stands the village of Simplon, the
rain was already lessening and the clouds rolling up the great sides and
peaks of the Fletschhorn. Ashe promised himself a comparatively fine
evening and a rapid run down to Brieg.

Outside the old Simplon posting-house, however, they presently came upon
a crowd of vehicles of every description, of which the drivers were
standing in groups with dripping rugs across their shoulders--shouting
and gesticulating.

And as they drove up the news was thundered at them in every possib