ingers touched hers, and he
started as if he had touched a galvanic battery. He looked at Huldah,
and saw a half-pained expression on her flushed face.

For the first time it occurred to him that Huldah Manners had excited
in him a feeling a thousand times deeper than anything he had felt
toward Janet, who seemed to be now in another world. For the first time
he realized that he had been more in love with Huldah than with Janet
all the time. Why not marry her? And then he remembered what the
governor had said about marrying a woman's heart and not her head.

He put on his hat and walked out--out, out, into the darkness, the
drizzling rain, and the slush of melting snow, fighting a fierce
battle. All his pride and all his cowardly vanity were on one side, all
the irresistible torrent of his love on the other. He walked away into
the dark wood pasture, trying to cool his brow, trying to think,
and--would you believe it?--trying to pray, for it was a great
struggle, and in any great struggle a true soul always finds something
very like prayer in his heart.

The feeling of love may exist without attracting the attention of its
possessor. It had never occurred to John that he could love or marry
Huldah. Thus the passion had grown all the more powerful for not being
observed, and now the unseen fire had at a flash appeared as an
all-consuming one.

Turning back, he stood without the window, in the shadow, and looked
through the glass at the trim young girl at work with her pies. In the
modest, restful face he read the story of a heart that had carried
great burdens patiently and nobly. What a glorious picture she was of
warmth and light, framed in darkness! To his heart at that moment all
the light and warmth of the world centered in Huldah. All the world
besides was loneliness and darkness and drizzle and slush. His fear of
his sister and of his friends seemed base and cowardly. And the more he
looked at this vision of the night, this revelation of peace and love
and light, the more he was determined to possess it. You will call him
precipitate. But when all a man's nobility is on one side and all his
meanness on the other, why hesitate? Besides, John Harlow had done more
thinking in that half hour than most men do in a month.

The vision had vanished from the window, and he went in and sat down.
She had by this time put in the last pie, and was sitting with her head
on her hand. The candle flickered and went out, and t