aius went home to his house. Inconsistency is the hall-mark of real in
distinction from unreal life. A note of happy music was sounding in his
heart. The bright spring evening seemed all full of joy. He saw a flock
of gannets stringing out in long line against the red evening sky, and
knew that all the feathered population of the rocks was returning to its
summer home. Something more than the mere joy of the season was making
him glad; he hardly knew what it was, for it appeared to him that
circumstances were untoward.

It was in vain that he reasoned that there was no cause for joy in the
belief that Josephine took delight in his society; that delight would
only make her lot the harder, and make for him the greater grievance. He
might as well have reasoned with himself that there was no cause for joy
in the fact of the spring; he was so created that such things made up
the bliss of life to him.

Caius did not himself think that Josephine owed any duty to La Maitre;
he could only hope, and try to believe, that the man was dead. Reason,
common-sense, appeared to him to do away with what slight moral or
religious obligation was involved in such a marriage; yet he was quite
sure of one thing--that this young wife, left without friend or
protector, would have been upon a very much lower level if she had
thought in the manner as he did. He knew now that from the first day he
had seen her the charm of her face had been that he read in it a
character that was not only wholly different to, but nobler than, his
own. He reflected now that he should not love her at all if she took a
stand less high in its sweet unreasonableness, and his reason for this
was simply that, had she done otherwise, she would not have been
Josephine.

The thought that Josephine was what she was intoxicated him; all the
next day time and eternity seemed glorious to him. The islands were
still ringed with the pearly ring of ice-floes, and for one brief spring
day, for this lover, it was enough to be yet imprisoned in the same bit
of green earth with his lady, to think of all the noble things she had
said and done, and, by her influence, to see new vistas opening into
eternity in which they two walked together. There was even some
self-gratulation that he had attained to faith in Heaven. He was one of
those people who always suppose that they would be glad to have faith if
they could. It was not faith, however, that had come to him, only a
refining and q