ave seen it coming,
that sometimes I persuade myself that I actually did. But how could I?
For if I had, with any certainty at all, surely I would have been man
enough to hide myself away somewhere, even at the ends of the earth.
Love does not grow and wax great upon air. Solid food is needed in the
occasional presence of the beloved. Suppose I had fled away the moment
I learned that Lucy no longer loved her husband? Already her heart
must have been turning to me, if only a little, but with the magnet
which had caused it to turn that little removed from sight, first, and
presently from mind, I believe that after a dazed numbed period that
heart of hers might have swung back into its place.

Later when Fulton said to me, "But you ought to have seen it coming,
and taken measures to see that it didn't come," I gave him my word that
I hadn't seen it coming, and it was very obvious that he didn't believe
me. Will anyone believe me? It doesn't matter. I am not even sure
myself that I am telling the truth. But I know that I am trying to.

I had left my mother to her interview with Hilda, and betaken myself to
the club. It was too early even to hope for a sight of Lucy. There
were a number of men in the reading-room discussing the morning leader
in that fair-minded and pithy sheet, the _Charleston News and Courier_,
and one of these, eyeing me with a quizzical expression, said: "You
look as if you had won a bet."

So already _it_ showed in my face.

Well, I felt as if I had won many bets, and was only twenty, and that
the course before me was all plain sailing. I was not yet in a
condition to argue with myself about right and wrong. It did not seem
worth while to look into the serried faces of difficulties and think
how I could burst through them. It was more natural on that first
morning after the discovery to look boldly over their heads to the rich
open and peaceful country beyond.

A line from the "Brushwood Boy" kept occurring to me, "But what shall I
do when I see you in the light?"

What should I do, what would Lucy do? Would there be people about or
would we have the good luck to meet alone? Did she still love me, or
had the dark night brought council and a change of heart? I knew that
it hadn't. We were as definitely engaged to each other as if there was
no husband in the way, no children, no law, no convention, no nothing.
I was idiotically happy.

One thing only troubled me a little. Had Luc