e.

This tumult of turbulent, coarse, unthinking life seemed at the moment
not merely normal but wholesome and admirable by force of contrast
with the morbid, unnatural, and useless scenes through which he had
just passed. Better to be a burly, unreflecting truckman than a
troubled, unresting soul like Anthony Clarke, "Yes, and better for
Viola Lambert to be the wife of one of these rude animal types,
suffering a life of physical hardship, than to continue the sport of
a man who, having lost the true values out of his own life, is
remorselessly distorting those of the woman he professes to love."

His mind then went back, by the same law of contrast, to his momentous
ride across the Sulphur Spring trail. "To think on how small a chance
my share in this girl's singular history hangs! Had I taken 'the
cut-off,' as my guide suggested, had I camped in the log-cabin at the
head of the canon, or had I saddled up the next morning and ridden
over to Silver City, as I had planned, we would never have met; and I
would not now be involved in her hysterical career."

But he had done neither of these things. He had camped in the town, he
had sought her, and in this seeking lay something more than chance.
His second meeting was an acknowledgment of his youth and her beauty.
She had held him in the village day by day, because she was lithe of
body and fair of face and because her eyes were unaccountably wistful.
Yes, he had sought her that night when the river sang with joyous,
immemorial clamor, and the lamp beckoned like a hand. He had gone to
her for diversion--that he now acknowledged--and he had grown each day
more deeply concerned with her life and its burdens.

And now here she was at his door, more dangerously enthralling than
ever, involved in a snare of most intricate pattern, calling upon him
through some hidden affinity of their natures as no woman had ever
called him before--calling so powerfully, so insistently, that to
save her from her peril, as pressing as it was intangible, seemed the
one and only task at his hand.

In this mood, sustained by the memory of her anguished face, he sent a
telegram to Lambert, urging him to come at once to the relief of his
wife and daughter.

He did not appreciate the full force of this act until he left the
office and resumed his walk homeward. Then, like a shock from a
battery, came the realisation. "I have now definitely intervened; but
how weakly, how ingloriously!"

This t