he rose, stood before him with downcast eyes, with mouth sad and
sweet. "No," she said, "It's you who are hiding the truth from
yourself. I hope--for both our sakes--that you'll see it before long.
Good-by--dear." She stretched out her hand.

Hesitatingly he took it. As their hands met, her pulse beating against
his, she lifted her eyes. And once more he was holding her close, was
kissing her. And she was lying in his arms unresisting, with two large
tears shining in the long lashes of her closed eyes.

"Oh, Jane--forgive me!" he cried, releasing her. "I must keep away
from you. I will--I WILL!" And he was rushing down the steep
slope--direct, swift, relentless. But she, looking after him with a
tender, dreamy smile, murmured: "He loves me. He will come again. If
not--I'll go and get him!"

To Jane Victor Dorn's analysis of his feeling toward her and of the
reasons against yielding to it seemed of no importance whatever. Side
by side with Selma's "One may not trifle with love" she would have put
"In matters of love one does not reason," as equally axiomatic. Victor
was simply talking; love would conquer him as it had conquered every
man and every woman it had ever entered. Love--blind, unreasoning,
irresistible--would have its will and its way.

And about most men she would have been right--about any man
practically, of the preceding generation. But Victor represented a new
type of human being--the type into whose life reason enters not merely
as a theoretical force, to be consulted and disregarded, but as an
authority, a powerful influence, dominant in all crucial matters. Only
in our own time has science begun to make a notable impression upon the
fog which formerly lay over the whole human mind, thicker here, thinner
there, a mere haze yonder, but present everywhere. This fog made clear
vision impossible, usually made seeing of any kind difficult; there was
no such thing as finding a distinct line between truth and error as to
any subject. And reason seemed almost as faulty a guide as
feeling--was by many regarded as more faulty, not without justification.

But nowadays for some of us there are clear or almost clear horizons,
and such fog banks as there are conceal from them nothing that is of
importance in shaping a rational course of life. Victor Dorn was one
of these emancipated few. All successful men form their lives upon a
system of some kind. Even those who seem to live at haphazar