h" to her. Yet the barrier between man and woman that
seemed so frail, had effectively obstructed the path that led to
intimacy.

Elijah was half-conscious of a longing which he could not express,
half-conscious that every attempt to gratify it was repulsed by an
intangible atmosphere which seemed transparent and unresisting, yet was
dense and impenetrable. Had he been able to state his position to
himself at this time, he would have shrunk from the picture. He was not
analytical, therefore he did not know that the greater part of the sins
of the world are the result not of deliberate premeditation and
decision, but of the almost unconscious, initial yielding to apparently
innocent impulses which should be recognized for what they are, for what
they may be, and crushed out of existence at once.

Elijah was strong in his vision of possibilities, strong in his purpose
to wrest success from the teeth of defeat, strong in the enthusiasm that
made him tingle with restless impatience to be doing, strong in his
power to kindle others with the fire of his own purpose; yet he was
weak. Weak because of an unconscious, yet all-pervading selfishness.
Imperative as were his visions, even so were his desires, and
unconsciously both centred in himself. As in the rock-ribbed, narrow
confines of his New England home, so in the desolate, sun-burned deserts
of California, unchecked by contact with his fellow men, his thoughts
ran riot in the channels of his glowing soul. He had longed for
sympathetic companionship; but his solitary, isolated life forbade it.
This longing had found gratification in what he grew to believe was
fellowship with God. His youth fostered the idea, his growing, solitary
years developed it into a fanatical belief. If he was in doubt, he took
refuge in prayer, not for guidance, firmly as he may have believed it,
but for confirmation. From his youth up, he had had a fanatical belief
in the guidance of Divinity, and had placed the Bible as a lamp to his
feet. Elijah prayed to God for guidance in paths which he should have
chosen for himself, blindly putting aside the fact that in the very
seeking for guidance, he was longing to be confirmed in a course which
in the depths of his soul he knew to be wrong. Fortified by his belief,
armed by God's sanction, he followed his desires mercilessly and without
shame.

Helen Lonsdale was not analytical, she was not fanatical, nor was she
deeply religious. Her surroundings ha