und that through all these years Jack
Darcy had refrained from influencing Sylvie in his behalf, was something
quite indescribable. She thought she had fathomed men's souls with her
keen insight, but this man was a Saul amid his peers. Had there been
some subtile, far-reaching foundation for Fred's regard in the boyhood
days,--something that their eyes, being holden with golden bonds, could
not see?

After the marriage there was a certain degree of association, not
intimacy. And yet she set herself to watch him. Somewhere she would
discern the print of the feet of clay this idol of Fred and Sylvie's
possessed.

It was a most fascinating yet dangerous employment. She used to sit
there in her impassive grace, as they talked, weighing every word,
testing every sentiment, watching the expressions that flitted over Jack
Darcy's countenance, until it went everywhere with her, the blue-gray
eyes piercing the very depths of her soul. They came to the one night
when a glance stirred and troubled both, when the depths of both natures
experienced that curious shock of repulsion and wonder. It was not love,
it was too near, too awesome, yet too spiritually pure, to be hate,
still it sent them apart none the less surely.

By degrees, even amid the hard struggle of the strikes, he came to a
self-knowledge. His perceptions were not easily confused; and by that
intuitive process born pure in every soul, but too often marred and
dulled by the many counterfeits put upon it, he knew this was love, a
life-long passion for one woman, not because she had as yet answered any
need of his nature, or promised any expansion into higher life. He loved
her just as she was; for her beauty, her swift, proud grace, her virtues
if she had any, her very faults, and of those he was not in doubt. And
he set himself to win her with the same high courage that had taken Hope
Mills in hand.

Occasionally we see a man wrecked by this steady, persistent,
overwhelming love for an inferior object, caught perhaps by some occult
fascination that flashes all laws out of sight. We wonder how he can be
so led astray; and yet it is an integral part of the man, a quality of
the soul which he would not overcome and put in bonds if he could.

He did not cringe or flatter, or adopt any of the fears or weaknesses of
passion. It was not weak, and he did not fear. He meant to be master of
her soul, and win her through that very power, struggle as she might. He
would wai