nt back to earth and
almost thrown into each other's arms in token that guilt was expiated
and vengeance satisfied? Dartmouth stopped suddenly as this solution
presented itself, then impatiently thrust a chair out of his way
and resumed his walk. The consciousness that their affection was the
perpetuation of a lustful love disheartened and revolted him. Until
that memory disappeared his punishment would not be over.

He stopped and leaned his hand on the table. "I thought I was a big
enough man to rise above conventional morality," he said. "But I doubt
if any man is when circumstances have combines to make him seriously
face the question. He might, if born a red Indian, but not if
saturated in his plastic days with the codes and dogmas of the world.
They cling, they cling, and reason cannot oust them. The society in
whose enveloping, penetrating atmosphere he has lived his life decrees
that it is a sin to seduce another man's wife or to live with a woman
outside the pale of the Church. Therefore sin, down in the roots of
his consciousness, he believes it; therefore, to perpetuate a sinful
love--I am becoming a petty moralist," he broke off impatiently; "but
I can't help it. I am a triumph of civilization."

He stood up and threw back his shoulders. "Let it go for the present,"
he said. "At another time I may look at it differently or reason
myself out of it. Now I will try--"

He looked towards his study door with a flash in his eyes. He half
turned away, then went quickly into the little room and sat down
before the desk. Every day he would make the attempt to write, and
finally that obstinate wedge in his brain would give way and his soul
be set free.

He drew paper before him and took up a pen. For an hour he sat
motionless, bending all his power of intellect, all the artistic
instincts of his nature to the luring of his song-children from that
closed wing in his brain. But he could not even hear their peremptory
knocks as on the nights when he had turned from those summonses in
agony and terror. He would have welcomed them now and dragged the
visitants into the sunlight of his intelligence and forced the song
from their throats.

He took the poem from his pocket and read it over. But it gave him no
inspiration, it dulled his brain, rather, and made him feel baffled
and helpless. But he would not give up; and dawn found him still with
his pen in his hand. Then he went to bed and slept for a few hours.
That da