him--a sudden lofty
independence--a sudden loathing of himself. He knew now that it was
not in him to do good work in the world, but at least he would pay his
own way. He had been a mass of vanity and now he was so mean in his
own eyes that he shrank from the passers-by. Perhaps the long strain
had damaged the gray matter of the brain, or some nervous centre--I do
not know what change a physician would have found in him, but the man
was changed.

A clerk was needed in a provision shop on Green Street. George placed
himself in the line of dirty, squalid applicants. The day was hot, the
air of the shop was foul with the smells of rotting meat and
vegetables. He felt himself stagger against a stall. He seemed to be
asleep, but he heard the butchers laughing. They called him a drunken
tramp, and then he was hurled out on the muddy pavement.

"Too much whiskey for this time o' day!" a policeman said, hauling him
to his feet.

"Move along, young man!"

Whiskey? That was what he wanted. He turned into a shop and bought a
dram with his last pennies. It made him comfortable for a few hours,
then he began to cry and swear. George Waldeaux had never been drunk
in his life. The ascetic, stainless priest in him stood off and looked
at this dog of the gutter with his obscene talk, and then came defeat
of soul and body.

"I give up!" he said quietly. "I'll never try again."

He wandered unconsciously to the ferry and, having his yearly book of
tickets in his pocket, took the train for home from force of habit. He
left the cars at a station several miles from Weir, and wandered across
the country. Just at sundown, covered with mud and weak from hunger
and drunkenness, he crossed the lawn before Lucy's house and, looking
up, saw her.

He had stumbled into a world of peace and purity! A soft splendor
filled the sky and the bay and the green slopes, with their clumps of
mighty forest trees. The air was full of the scents of flowers and the
good-night song of happy birds. And in the midst of it all, lady of
the great domain, under her climbing rose vines, sat the young, fair
woman, clad in some fleecy white garments, her head bent, her blue eyes
fixed on the distance--waiting.

George stopped, sobered by a sudden wrench of his heart. There was the
world to which he belonged--there! His keen eye noted every delicate
detail of her beauty and of her dress. He was of her sort, her
kind--he, kicked into the gutt