own consciousness.

What had the dreary, desolated years done for him? He was a fool. Why
had he not taken what was possible, since the ideal was dashed from him?

This girl, way off there behind the hideous shadow, had been wiser. She
had replaced his memory by living love; why should not he take the poor
substitute that the Solitude offered, and warm the barren places of his
heart and life with the faint glow?

It was a bad hour for Temptation to assail John Gaston.

The armour of self-wrought strength was off. Suffering was flaying the
naked despair and yearning; and just then Temptation knocked softly and
pitifully at the door of the outer room!

Gaston had done more while he had hidden in the woods than he was aware
of. He had developed something akin to second sight. Loneliness and
empty hours had strengthened this as blindness intensifies other senses
to abnormal keenness. Gradually he had grown to believe that a man's
life, complete and prearranged, lies stretched before, and occasionally
some, when the circumstances are propitious and the soul has a certain
detachment that ignores the bodily claims, can leap over the _now_ and
here, and catch a glimpse of the future and what it holds. This vague
sense had come to Gaston more than once during the past year or two--the
seeing and hearing of that which had held no part in what was, at the
moment, occurring, but which he noted later had become a fact in his
life.

That feeble knock dragged the man's consciousness away from the pictured
face; away from his wavering indecision; away from the darkening room
with its foul smell of oil: he knew who stood outside in the
moonlighted, fragrant summer night, and he wondered if he were going to
open that barred door to her. He waited for a glimpse of what was in
store for them both.

But his spiritual sight was blinded by a firm, deadening blankness!
Whatever was to be the outcome must be of his own choosing.

Again she knocked, that poor little temptress in the dark. What had Fate
decreed that he was to do? Gaston knew as well as if Joyce had told him,
_why_ she had come. Her soul had revolted from her concession to Jude.
In the bewitched hours of darkness, the primitive, savage instinct had
driven the girl to the only one who could change her future. Worn,
weary, defiant, she had come to him; not questioning further than her
despair and his power.

Well, why not? Who would be the worse, and who the better--if he