the longing to see her, to be near
her, to test his vaunted self-control, never for an instant subsided. He
fought the harder because he was always asking himself why he fought at
all. Why should he not take what belonged to him? Why should he deny
himself happiness when it was so much to be desired and so easy to obtain?

But always when he was nearest to the breaking point, and the rush of
feeling was at flood, there crept up beside him the shadow that threatened
his very existence and hers. He had taken the life of her husband. He had
no right to her. Down in his heart he knew that there was no moral ground
for the position he took and from which he could not extricate himself. He
had committed no crime. There had been no thought of himself in that
solemn hour when he delivered his best friend out of bondage. Anne had no
qualms, and he knew her to be a creature of fine feelings. She had always
revolted against the unlovely aspects of life, and all this despite the
claim she made that love would survive the most unholy of oppressions.
What was it then that _he_ was afraid of? What was it that made him hold
back while love tugged so violently, so persistently at his heart-strings?

At times he had flashes of the thing that created the shadow, and it was
then that he grasped, in a way, the true cause of his fears. Back of
everything he realised there was the most uncanny of superstitions. He
could not throw off the feeling that his grandfather, in his grave, still
had his hand lifted against his marriage with Anne Tresslyn; that the
grim, loving old man still regarded himself as a safeguard against the
connivings of Anne!

His common sense, of course, resisted this singular notion. He had but to
recall his grandfather's praise of Anne just before he went to his death.
Surely that signified an altered opinion of the girl, and no doubt there
was in his heart during those last days of life, a very deep, if puzzled,
admiration for her. And yet, despite the conviction that his grandfather,
had he been pressed for a definite statement would have declared himself
as being no longer opposed to his marriage with Anne, there still remained
the fact that he had gone to his grave without a word to show that he
regarded his experiment as a failure. And he had gone to his grave in a
manner that left no room for doubt that his death was to stand always as
an obstacle in the path of the lovers. There were times when Braden Thorpe
coul