kept him from
feeling in their intensity up to this miserable hour. He thought of
all that a maddened nature can imagine to deaden its own intolerable
anguish. Of revenge. If Myrtle rejected his suit, should he take her
life on the spot, that she might never be another's,--that neither
man nor woman should ever triumph over him,--the proud ambitious man,
defeated, humbled, scorned? No! that was a meanness of egotism which
only the most vulgar souls could be capable of. Should he challenge her
lover? It was not the way of the people and time, and ended in absurd
complications, if anybody was foolish enough to try it. Shoot him? The
idea floated through his mind, for he thought of everything; but he
was a lawyer, and not a fool, and had no idea of figuring in court as
a criminal. Besides, he was not a murderer,--cunning was his natural
weapon, not violence. He had a certain admiration of desperate crime in
others, as showing nerve and force, but he did not feel it to be his own
style of doing business.

During the night he made every arrangement for leaving the village the
next day, in case he failed to make any impression on Myrtle Hazard
and found that his chance was gone. He wrote a letter to his partner,
telling him that he had left to join one of the regiments forming in the
city. He adjusted all his business matters so that his partner should
find as little trouble as possible. A little before dawn he threw
himself on the bed, but he could not sleep; and he rose at sunrise, and
finished his preparations for his departure to the city.

The morning dragged along slowly. He could not go to the office, not
wishing to meet his partner again. After breakfast he dressed himself
with great care, for he meant to show himself in the best possible
aspect. Just before he left the house to go to The Poplars, he took the
sealed package from his trunk, broke open the envelope, took from it a
single paper,--it had some spots on it which distinguished it from
all the rest,--put it separately in his pocket, and then the envelope
containing the other papers. The calm smile he wore on his features as
he set forth cost him a greater effort than he had ever made before to
put it on. He was moulding his face to the look with which he meant to
present himself; and the muscles had been sternly fixed so long that it
was a task to bring them to their habitual expression in company,--that
of ingenuous good-nature.

He was shown into the pa