Page:Fletcher--Where Highways Cross.djvu/194

 The horse, wearied and frightened by the harsh treatment it had received, dropped into a slow walk, hanging its head and panting. Hepworth let it go its own way. He sat with folded arms and bowed head, thinking gloomily.

"All is over," he said to himself. "I have lived in a fool's paradise, and now I am turned out of it. I used to wonder at Elisabeth when she first told me of her doubts about God, but now I half believe in what she said. What a mockery is life! Here am I, loving with all my heart a woman who is tied to another man. She loved that man passionately once, and believed in him with absolute confidence, and all the time he was deceiving her. She and I would have been happy together—it couldn't have been otherwise, because I love her. And now it's all over—and I'm sick at heart for wonder that God lets such things be. Oh, I don't wonder that Elisabeth had doubts. It seems as if God played shuttlecock with human lives. Is