been sweet enough--sweet as
food after long famine. But far more than these would it have been to
go back and take the hand of his friend once more in the old, unclouded
trust of their youth; to go back, and stand free and blameless among his
peers, and know that all that man could do to win the heart and the
soul of a woman he could at his will do to win hers whose mere glance
of careless pity had sufficed to light his life to passion. And he
had renounced all this. This was the cost; and he had paid it--paid it
because the simple, natural, inflexible law of justice had demanded it.

One whom he had once chosen to save he could not now have deserted,
except by what would have been, in his sight, dishonor. Therefore, when
the day broke, and the memories of the night came with his awakening, he
knew that his future was without hope--without it as utterly as was ever
that of any captive shut in darkness, and silence, and loneliness, in a
prison, whose only issue was the oubliettes. There is infinite misery
in the world, but this one misery is rare; or men would perish from the
face of the earth as though the sun withdrew its light.

Alone in that dreary scene, beautiful from its vastness and its
solemnity, but unutterably melancholy, unutterably oppressive, he also
wondered whether he lived or dreamed.

From among the reeds the plovers were rising; over the barren rocks the
dazzling lizards glided; afar off strayed the goats; that was the
only sign of animal existence. He had wandered a long way from the
caravanserai, and he began to retrace his steps, for his horse
was there, and although he had received license to take leisure in
returning, he had no home but the camp, no friends but those wild-eyed,
leopard-like throng around him like a pack of dogs, each eager for the
first glance, the first word; these companions of his adversity and of
his perils, whom he had learned to love, with all their vices and all
their crimes, for sake of the rough, courageous love that they could
give in answer.

He moved slowly back over the desolate tracks of land stretched between
him and the Algerian halting-place. He had no fear that he would find
his brother there. He knew too well the nature with which he had to deal
to hope that old affection would so have outweighed present fear that
his debtor would have stayed to meet him yet once more. On the impulse
of the ungovernable pain which the other's presence had been, he had
bidden