re
overhead; he could hear them at near intervals clashing over the stone
bridge. And there was not a train which passed that he did not long to
be at the front of it to measure and let out its speed. What a mad
flight he would have given it, to make men hold their breath with
terror! How he would have driven it till its end was death and
chaos!--so much the better.

There suddenly formed in Hosmer's mind a sentence--sharp and distinct.
We are all conscious of such quick mental visions whether of words or
pictures, coming sometimes from a hidden and untraceable source,
making us quiver with awe at this mysterious power of mind manifesting
itself with the vividness of visible matter.

"It was the act of a coward."

Those were the words which checked him, and forbade him to go farther:
which compelled him to turn about and face the reality of his
convictions.

It is no unusual sight, that of a man lying full length in the soft
tender grass of some retired spot of Forest park--with his face hidden
in his folded arms. To the few who may see him, if they speculate at
all about him he sleeps or he rests his body after a day's fatigue.
"Am I never to be the brave man?" thought Hosmer, "always the coward,
flying even from my own thoughts?"

How hard to him was this unaccustomed task of dealing with moral
difficulties, which all through his life before, however lightly they
had come, he had shirked and avoided! He realized now, that there was
to be no more of that. If he did not wish his life to end in
disgraceful shipwreck, he must take command and direction of it upon
himself.

He had felt himself capable of stolid endurance since love had
declared itself his guide and helper. But now--only to-day--something
beside had crept into his heart. Not something to be endured, but a
thing to be strangled and thrust away. It was the demon of hate; so
new, so awful, so loathsome, he doubted that he could look it in the
face and live.

Here was the problem of his new existence.

The woman who had formerly made his life colorless and empty he had
quietly turned his back upon, carrying with him a pity that was not
untender. But the woman who had unwittingly robbed him of all
possibility of earthly happiness--he hated her. The woman who for the
remainder of a life-time was to be in all the world the nearest thing
to him, he hated her. He hated this woman of whom he must be careful,
to whom he must be tender, and loyal and genero