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284 "Oh! Feed him to the dog?" Dick revolved this in silence for a minute. "I fancy you have hit a greater truth than you think, Passpartout. Throw some more wood on, and rake those smoking branches in. And then you can go to sleep as soon as you like."

Passpartout retired into his wolf-skin robe even as Dick retired into his thoughts and smoked. And those thoughts were not entirely bitter. He was too much of a born tramp, a born rover, not to feel the exhilaration of his surroundings; of the widespread brooding hush of the forest; the heavy dark branches against the stars; the crisp, white snow about him and the smell of the resinous burning wood. He had turned many pages of Life's book in his time, and he was not tired of turning them yet. The impossibility of turning more, even though they had all been for evil, would have been the only thing which could have really broken the restless heart in him.

Almost at the moment when he gave that stunning blow to Tempest it had interested him to find out how the man would stand under it. It had interested him to find that he himself could speak so clearly and convincingly on a matter which had no personal meaning for him except in so far as it affected Tempest. It interested him now to wonder if there was any truth in Tempest's idea that Andree loved him, and it interested him quite a good deal to wonder what he should do if there was. To examine and observe and dissect everything, even his own soul and the souls of those he loved best—this was what had come to him out of his desire to see life clearly. But because he had to examine them all through the lens of his own mind what he saw was necessarily distorted.

His very love and reverence for Jennifer were spoiled by the belief that she would give way in the end. Her creeds would not be proof against her love, any more than Tempest's had been. By and by she would let his hand break the thing which she said was herself—the self he loved. And fiercely though he wanted her now, how did he know that he would always want her? Change was the only thing which never tired him; the new was the only mate he always met with gladness; the elusive and the un-