to
establish a sequence; to set its outraged home again in order.

Suddenly the car skidded on a slippery hillside, turned from the road,
plowed through a clump of scrub, ricochetted against a dark
obstruction, poised a moment on two wheels, turned around and stopped.
The shock brought Dave to his senses; he got out and walked about the
car, feeling the tires with his hands in the darkness. He could
appraise no serious damage. Then he sat on the running board and
stared for a long while into the darkness. "No use being a damned
fool, anyway, Dave," he said to himself, at length. "I got it--where I
didn't expect it--but I guess that's the way with every one. The
troubles we expect, don't happen, and then the trouble that we didn't
expect gets us when we're not watching." He tried to philosophize; to
get a fresh grip on himself. "Where are we, anyway?" he continued.
"This country looks familiar." He got up again and walked about,
finding his way back to the road. He went along it a little way.
Vague impressions suggested that he should know the spot, and yet he
could not identify it. Listen! There was a sound of water. There was
a sighing of the wind in trees; a very low sighing, rather a
whispering, of a gentle wind in trees. The place seemed alive with
spirits; spirits tapping on the door of some long sealed chamber of his
memory.

Then, with a sudden shock, it came to him. It was the hillside on
which Dr. Hardy had come to grief; the hillside on which he had first
seen her bright face, her wonderful eyes---- A poignancy of grief
engulfed him, sweeping away his cheap philosophies. Here she stood,
young and clean and entrancing, thrust before him in an instant out of
the wonderful days of the past. And would she always follow him thus;
would she stand at every road corner, every street corner, on every
prairie hill, in every office hour; must he catch her fragrance in
every breeze; see the glint of her hair in every sunbeam; meet her eyes
for ever--soft eyes now veiled in tears and flashing glimpses of what
might have been? With an unutterable sinking he knew that that was so;
that the world was not big enough to hide him from Irene Hardy. There
was no way out.

He started his motor and, even in his despair, felt a thrill of pride
as the faithful gears engaged, and the car climbed back to its place on
the trail. Was all faithfulness, then, in things of steel and iron,
and none in flesh and blood?