uld meet most of them on higher ground. If they didn't know
it, that would be their discredit. I should think you could see
that," she added, in a quick, parenthetic averse way, "from _their_
associate. If you want to get a higher opinion of the value of your
life, compare it with an ordinary, foolish, useless one--like mine."
She gave him no chance to answer that, but was the next moment on her
feet, suggesting that they walk on, and wishing they were not to stop
short of the Lassen Buttes, whose apparent nearness, scores of miles
distant as they were, was still a perpetual surprise to her eastern
eyes.

When everything has been made ready for it, a few sentences may easily
make or mark an era in life; and it is probable that if Miss Northrop
had not in effect told young Strong he was quite good enough for her,
he might have remained her contented vassal for years. Six months of
being her nearest friend worked their result, to be sure; but the
humility they were gnawing at was of mediaevally tough fibre, and of
twice six years' growth. His depreciation of himself, however, had
only meant sense of distance from her; therefore, his sense of the
significance of her speech was enormous. He felt his relation to her
changed; he was shaken from all his moorings, and thrown into a mighty
agitation that possessed him night and day, and only grew with time.
For this was what it all came to: Was the distance between Winifred
and himself greater than the distance between her and any other man?
And when he had once thought that, the gate was open, and the
besieging host marched in and took possession of every corner of him
with longing and desire and a madness of tenderness.

He thought of nothing else. He wrote his editorials and set type under
an unceasing sense of it, as people have done brain-work and
finger-work to an accompaniment of unceasing physical pain. For there
was nothing joyous about it to him; it was all a bitter pain of mad
desire to be something to her--to secure her, somehow, before this
great, dark future swept her away from him. And yet the latter rains
came and went, the green faded from the ground, the mountains grew
dimmer and duller, and at last disappeared in the summer murk, before
he took in his own mind the next step--from lover to suitor, as before
from vassal to lover.

He did so simply because he could not stand it any longer. It stood to
reason that there must be a way out of such active torments