ful eyes and the low voice, the very sound of which
brought comfort and peace. They were his hands and eyes. She had given
them to him. And now she had wrenched them away again, those faithful
eyes had seared him with their scorn, those white hands, against which
he had leaned his forehead, had thrust him violently from her. He could
not live without her. This was death, to be parted from her.

"I can't, Rachel, I can't," said Hugh, over and over again. What was any
lesser death, compared to this, compared to her contempt?

She would never come back. She despised him. She would never love him
any more. He had told her that it must be a dream that she could love
him, and that he should wake. And she had said it was all quite true.
How sweetly she had said it. But it was a dream, after all, and he _had_
waked--in torment. Life as long as he lived would be like this moment.

"I will not bear it," he said, suddenly, with the frantic instinct of
escape which makes a man climb out of a burning house over a
window-ledge. Far down is the pavement, quiet, impassive, deadly. But
behind is the blast of the furnace. Panic staggers between the two,
and--jumps.

"I will not bear it," said Hugh, tears of anguish welling up into his
eyes.

He had not only lost her, but he had lost himself. That better, humble,
earnest self had gone away with Rachel, and he was thrust back on the
old false cowardly self whom, since she had loved him, he had abhorred.
He had disowned it. He had cast it off. Now it enveloped him again like
a shirt of fire, and a voice within him said, "This is the real you. You
deceived yourself for a moment. But this is the real you--the liar, the
coward, the traitor, who will live with you again forever."

"I am forsaken," said Hugh. He repeated the words over and over again.
"Forsaken! Forsaken!" And he looked round for a way of escape.

Somewhere in the back of his mind a picture hung which he had seen once
and never looked at again. He turned and looked at it now, as a man
turns and looks at a picture on the wall behind him.

He saw it again, the still upturned face of the little lake among its
encircling trees, as he had seen it that day when he and Doll came
suddenly upon it in the woods. What had it to do with him? He had
escaped from it once. _He understood now_.

Who, that has once seen it, has ever forgotten it, the look that deep
water takes when life is unbearable! "Come down to me among my tall
wat