s of
conscience and self-reproach. Some of them succeed in doing so, but
find the pair waiting for them on their own doorstep. Herbert Courtland
galloped his horse intermittently for an hour or two, and then rode
leisurely back to his rooms. He felt that he had got the better of those
two enemies of his who had been irritating him. He heard their voices
no longer. He had lost them (he fancied), because there had come to him
another voice that said:

"I love her--I love her."

And whensoever that voice comes to a man as it came to Herbert Courtland
it drowns all other voices. He would love her to the end of his life.
Their life together would be the real life for which men and women have
come into the world. He would go to her, and so far from allowing her
to sink beneath the waters down to hell, his arms would be around her
to bear her up until--well, is it not generally conceded that love is
heaven and heaven is love?

He seated himself at a desk and wrote to her an impassioned line. He
would go to her, he said. If death should come to him the next day he
would still thank God for having given him an hour of life.

That was what he said--all. It expressed pretty well what he felt he
should feel. That reference to God she would, of course, understand. God
was to him a Figure of Speech. He had said as much to Phyllis Ayrton.
But then he had said that he had regarded God to mean the Power by
which men were able (sometimes) successfully to combat the influences
of nature. But had he not just then made up his mind to yield to that
passion which God, as a Principle, has the greatest difficulty in
opposing? Why, then, should he expect that Ella would understand
precisely what he meant in saying that he would thank God for his hour
of life, his hour of love?

He would have had considerable difficulty in explaining this apparent
discrepancy between his scheme of philosophy and his life as a man, had
Phyllis asked him to do so; and Phyllis would certainly have asked him
to do so had she become acquainted with the contents of his letter to
her friend Ella; though Phyllis' father, having acquired some knowledge
of men as well as of phrases, would not have asked for any explanation,
knowing that a man's philosophy is, in its relation to a man's life, a
good deal less important than the fuse is to a bomb. He would have known
that a scheme of philosophy no more brings wisdom into a man's life than
a telescope brings the moon ne