never shines on sea
or land for those who have not suffered.

Only a short time ago he had begun daily to realize and tell himself
that strength and steadfastness alone really mattered; that suffering
was but a flame which passed. This was still true, as true as it had
ever been. A man could choose whether the flame should consume or
purify him in its passing; and here and now the immediate hour of his
choice was on the stroke. At the end of that day of turmoil, Denin
seemed still to be looking down at himself, as a crouching prisoner in
a dark underground cell. Yet he knew that he was his own prisoner, not
really a helpless captive of the Fate he had cursed. Fate had no power
after all to make men prisoners. It was their business to find this
out, and to prove that they had only to release themselves, in order to
be free. He felt this to be an abstract fact of life; and if he meant
to live he must make it concrete.

The underground hole where he so miserably crouched was but the cellar
of his darkest self. If he but thought so, he had strength enough in
him to fight his way up into the high, bright tower which was also
himself, a tower with a wide view on every side, over the sunlit
mountains from whose peaks he could already catch some glimmering
vision.

Even the thought of the mountain tops--that they were there, shining,
and always had been and always would be--made Denin lift his head and
draw deep breaths into his lungs. That part of him which had yearned to
write the book for Barbara and had conquered difficulties to write it,
came like a strong brother to the rescue of a weak brother and pulled
him up by main force out of the dark. He tried to reassure himself,
over and over, that he need never again crawl back into the darkness.
He had seen the view from the tower, and the tower was his to reach.

Denin had not worked out for his own guidance any clear-cut philosophy
of life. He had just stumbled along with strength for his goal mark,
trying now and then to recall some whisper or note of music he had
caught from the other side before he came back. He had written down in
his book, for Barbara, all that had been tangible under his pen. But
now, knowing she had loved him, he saw how much more help she needed
than he had given, and how much more--how very much more--he owed her.

Not that he had deliberately stood aside and left the girl unprotected.
When in the German hospital he had drifted back to a knowl