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Rh know it would be like this, exactly," he said to himself. Always before he had craved to have things go swiftly ahead, event succeeding event while his mind still tugged forward to the future; but now a little pause in the present, a breathing-space to look happily about in, was his sole desire. It was only his promise to Helen that made him renounce the temptation of smoking his pipe and thinking there on the summit, and go slowly down through the black firs.

For the first few steps he could look down the evergreen glacier, miles down, it seemed, upon the dimly shining harbor, two or three boats at anchor, the dark curve of the bar, and a sombre headland along which a single belated gull went winging swiftly. Then he was immersed in darkness. As he stumbled downward he found his thoughts strangely mingled: Helen with her shining hair confused somehow amid a newborn pity for her father, a new inquisitiveness as to his life and the lives of others, the man with the blue-veined forehead, his pert little brother, the fishermen silent in their cups. "He must