hadow to me now, hardly more real than Mr. Pound or Miss Spinner or
any other of the dim figures in my memory. Before me was Penelope--the
future and Penelope. Her world was not my world, but I vowed that I
would make it mine.

Perhaps, I said, I shall see her again this very morning and perhaps
she will greet me again with that same kindly, glorious smile. And
surely she would smile did she know that I was free from the yoke to
which I had bent myself in a moment of forgetfulness. My duty had been
to Penelope since that day when we rode from the clearing, and from
that day my heart had always been with her. Reading from the past, her
destiny and mine were written before me in clear, bold letters. How
good the world was! How bright the day! How quick my step as I turned
up-town!

And I saw Penelope. She bowed to me from a hansom, and I answered,
beaming. I halted. Herbert Talcott was sitting at her side. He
stared at me, tipped his hat brusquely, then turned to her and made
some laughing remark.

I stood looking after the receding hansom until it disappeared in the
maze of traffic. I took my conge as a man does sometimes, with my head
bowed under the crushing blow, and my eyes downcast, knowing in my
heart that for me the sunshine could nevermore be joyous.

CHAPTER XXII

There was no doubt in my mind that Penelope Blight was engaged to marry
Talcott. They announced the fact when they rode the length of the
Avenue together in a hansom. But had I questioned the meaning of their
appearing thus in public I could not long have cheered myself with vain
hope, for the papers next morning blazoned the news to all the world.
That they printed it under great staring head-lines was not surprising
to me, for to me this fact transcended all others in importance.
Beside it the rumblings of war in the Balkans, the devastating flood in
China, or the earthquake which wrecked a southern city were trifles.
So to my distorted view the papers were filled with the announcement of
my overwhelming misfortune. Only by the greatest effort could I drag
myself from reading and rereading to my humdrum task. Before me in
black and white was the last chapter in my own story, the story which
had begun that day when I went fishing. Every line of it, couched in
the hackneyed phrases of the business, was a cutting blow, and yet I
must return again and again to the beating. Had Rufus Blight been a
poor man, a worthy man whos