ugh, to be so good as
stretch myself on the rack again. I would not go. That laugh was cruel
insolence. I knew that laugh. Ah, why so I did--I knew it well--how it
rose and rippled and fell, losing itself in echoes scarcely audible, but
rich with enticing mirth. Surely she was cunningly fashioned for the
undoing of men; yes, and of herself, poor soul. What were her coaches,
and the Flemish horses, and the house called Burford House in Chelsea? A
wave of memory swept over me, and I saw her simple--well then, more
simple!--though always merry, in the sweet-smelling fields at home,
playing with my boy's heart as with a toy that she knew little of, but
yet by instinct handled deftly. It pleased her mightily, that toy, and
she seemed to wonder when she found that it felt. She did not feel; joy
was hers, nothing deeper. Yet could she not, might she not, would she
not? I knew what she was; who knew what she might be? The picture of her
rose again before my eyes, inviting a desperate venture, spurring me on
to an enterprise in which the effort seemed absurdity, and success would
have been in the eyes of the world calamity. Yet an exaltation of spirit
was on me, and I wove another dream that drove the first away; now I did
not go to Dover to play my part in great affairs and jostle for higher
place in a world where in God's eyes all places are equal and all low,
but away back to the country I had loved, and not alone. She should be
with me, love should dress penitence in glowing robes, and purity be
decked more gloriously than all the pomps of sin. Could it be? If it
could, it seemed a prize for which all else might be willingly
forgone--an achievement rare and great, though the page of no history
recorded it.

Phineas Tate had preached to her, and gone away, empty and scorned. I
would preach too, in different tones and with a different gospel. Yet my
words should have a sweetness his had not, my gospel a power that should
draw where his repelled. For my love, shaken not yet shattered, wounded
not dead, springing again to full life and force, should breathe its
vital energy into her soul and impart of its endless abundance till her
heart was full. Entranced by this golden vision, I rose and looked from
the window at the dawning day, praying that mine might be the task, the
achievement, the reward.

Bright dawned that day as I, with brighter brightness in my heart,
climbed the stairs that led to my bedroom. But as I reached the