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 not make money there yet, not for years and years. Marien was right. If he persisted, rewards would come and affluence. But they would come at the other end of life. He must have them now.

Perhaps hardest of all to John was the hurt to his pride, to his self-confidence, the reflection that, having set his eye upon a shining goal, he must abandon the march toward it unbeaten, with his strength untested, or with the tests so far made distinctly in his favor. It was hard to think himself a "quitter." And yet he could feel the stir of a noble satisfaction in being a "quitter" for duty's sake. He remembered with a certain sad pleasure how almost prophetically he had told Mr. Mitchell that it would only be something that would happen to Dick and Tayna that could keep him from going on with his ambition. Now exactly that had come to pass; yet to make immediate surrender of the ambition to which he had devoted himself with such enthusiasm seemed impossible. He knew what he should do—what he intended to do—but he lacked the resolution for the moment.

If Bessie were only here!

And yet if she were, he would shrink from her presence. He felt just now unworthy to look into those trusting eyes of blue. This time he must face his destiny alone.

His head sank low. His hands were clasped above it, as they had been that night when he was stricken blind. The world was dark before him. Now, as then, he felt sorry for himself. In a very few months a great many things had happened to him that had wrenched him violently. He had been racked by doubts and inflamed by mysterious emotions. He had hoped and he had dared; he had struggled; he had gained some things and lost some; but he had survived, and on the whole was conquering. Now came the heaviest blow, as it seemed,