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AVE was skating about with quick, ecstatic strength. Quickness came naturally to him and so did strength, in any emergency; but this ecstasy was something new. "I'm away," he said to himself. "Away . . . away!" It was a sensation which thrilled through him. "Away!"

"Away with her!" it was; he would be away with Fidelia Netley.

Away from Alice. This sensation of "away" included that; but as he rushed from the shore, he did not feel himself fleeing from Alice, personally; she became only a part of all that which he was escaping—duty and his father's ideas, his own fears and prohibitions.

Strange that, only a few weeks ago, Alice and his betrothal to her represented his revolt from those duties and ideas of which she now had become a part. That had been before Fidelia Netley came, or before he knew her. Now what did it mean that his plan to marry Alice, which had been in defiance to duty, itself had become a duty?

This did not become a conscious question; it was merely an impulse in his sensation as he skated swiftly, feeling the thrust of the wind at his back. He said to himself: "We'll never get in."

By never, he meant never that night. With Fidelia