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334 of the clear ringing shot and the wild day-dawn gallop, into the pastimes that had no taint in them, the chase that had no pang in it. That old life had been so free, so elastic, so unshadowed, with all the liberty of the desert, with all the zest of hardihood in it, with no thought for the morrow, and no regret for the past, with sleep sound as a mountaineer's, with strength exhaustless as the sea eagle's. He was leaving it. And for what? For a love that already had cost him a year of pain to a few short hours of hope; for a woman of whom he knew nothing, not even whether she were the wife or the mistress of another; for the miserable fever of restless passion, for the haunting torment of unattainable joys, for the intoxication of tempest-tossed desires, for the shadows of surrounding doubt and mystery. Better far let the strange charm that had enthralled him be cut away at any cost, and go back to that old life while there was yet time. The thought crossed him for the moment as he drifted from the quay of the Golden Horn. The next it passed as swiftly; let him plunge into the recesses of Asia or the green depths of Western wilds, he would carry with him his passion and her memory; and the schooner swept down beyond the Dardanelles in her pursuit, through the phosphor crests of starlit wares as the night deepened, and