began to whiten
over the horizon. The tower of the Mission stood black against it. The
dawn was coming. The baffling obscurity of the night was passing. Hidden
things were coming into view.

Annixter, his eyes half-closed, his chin upon his fist, allowed his
imagination full play. How would it be if he should take Hilma into
his life, this beautiful young girl, pure as he now knew her to be;
innocent, noble with the inborn nobility of dawning womanhood? An
overwhelming sense of his own unworthiness suddenly bore down upon him
with crushing force, as he thought of this. He had gone about the
whole affair wrongly. He had been mistaken from the very first. She was
infinitely above him. He did not want--he should not desire to be the
master. It was she, his servant, poor, simple, lowly even, who should
condescend to him.

Abruptly there was presented to his mind's eye a picture of the years to
come, if he now should follow his best, his highest, his most unselfish
impulse. He saw Hilma, his own, for better or for worse, for richer or
for poorer, all barriers down between them, he giving himself to her as
freely, as nobly, as she had given herself to him. By a supreme effort,
not of the will, but of the emotion, he fought his way across that
vast gulf that for a time had gaped between Hilma and the idea of his
marriage. Instantly, like the swift blending of beautiful colours, like
the harmony of beautiful chords of music, the two ideas melted into one,
and in that moment into his harsh, unlovely world a new idea was born.
Annixter stood suddenly upright, a mighty tenderness, a gentleness
of spirit, such as he had never conceived of, in his heart strained,
swelled, and in a moment seemed to burst. Out of the dark furrows of
his soul, up from the deep rugged recesses of his being, something rose,
expanding. He opened his arms wide. An immense happiness overpowered
him. Actual tears came to his eyes. Without knowing why, he was not
ashamed of it. This poor, crude fellow, harsh, hard, narrow, with his
unlovely nature, his fierce truculency, his selfishness, his obstinacy,
abruptly knew that all the sweetness of life, all the great vivifying
eternal force of humanity had burst into life within him.

The little seed, long since planted, gathering strength quietly, had at
last germinated.

Then as the realisation of this hardened into certainty, in the growing
light of the new day that had just dawned for him, Annixter uttered