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 vague consciousness, that its passage had been accompanied by the flight of something within himself that he had no power to define or to analyse. The man who now sat by the dying fire was not the man who had entered the room an hour previously. All his life had flowed with smooth purpose to that point, and there it had encountered new forces and had become—what? He tried to think what the events of the evening meant to him, but could decide nothing. All he knew was that he loved Elisabeth with a keen, strong, passionate devotion, and that her confidence in him had intensified that devotion ten-fold.

He sat while the fire died out and the parlour filled with gloom, still thinking. He recalled her voice, her manner, her attitude as she told him her story; he re-lived the moment when she burst into tears and he himself was seized with a fierce desire to take her into his arms and bid her sob out her sorrow on his breast. He had never