im for all
who had given way to this great need of love, and yet he felt strange
indignation and shame that he himself had come into the common lot.

"It is no use; I can't," he said, quite out loud, and set a hard face
against all the soft lights and shadows which moved upon him with the
motion of his own desires.

When he said "I can't," Jerome meant not so much any ultimate end of
love as love itself. He never for a second had a thought that he
could marry Lucina Merritt, Squire Eben Merritt's daughter, nor
indeed would if he could. He never fancied that that fair lady in her
silk attire could come to love him so unwisely as to wed him, and had
he fancied it the fierce revolt at receiving so much where he could
give so little, which was one of his first instincts, would have
seized him. Never once he thought that he could marry Lucina, and
take her into his penury or profit by her riches. All he resolved
against was the love itself, which would make him weak with the
weakness of all unfed things, and he made a stand of rebellion.

"I'm going to put her out of my mind," said Jerome, and stood up to
his full height among the sweet spring growths, flinging back his
head, as if he defied Nature herself, and went pushing rudely through
the tremulous outreaching poplar branches, and elbowed a cluster of
white flowering bushes huddling softly together, like maidens who
must put themselves in a man's way, though to their own shaming.

Chapter XXV

Jerome decided that he would not go to see Lucina Merritt that Sunday
night. He knew that she expected him, though there had been no formal
agreement to that effect; he knew that she would wonder at his
non-appearance, and, even though she were not disappointed, that she
would think him untruthful and unmannerly.

"Let her," he told himself, harshly, fairly scourging himself with
his resolution. "Let her think just as badly of me as she can. I'll
get over it quicker."

The ineffable selfishness of martyrdom was upon him. He considered
only his own glory and pain of noble renunciation, and not her agony
of disillusion and distrust, even if she did not care for him. That
last possibility he did not admit for a moment. In the first place,
though he had loved her almost at first sight, the counter-reasoning
he did not imagine could apply to her. It had been as simple and
natural in his case as looking up at a new star, but in hers--what
was there in him to arrest her s