to treason as the sparks fly upward. You lied
to me, Gertrude, and I believed you. You lured me on deliberately, with
a cold cruelty for which there is no name. I shall never hate you as
well as I have loved you, for I have a rather poor capacity in that way.
You found a man with a bruised heart, and for your own wicked pleasure
you set to work to torture him. There is no use in words, and I have
said all I came to say.'

That was the end of that episode, and a minute later he was striding
along the street. In three days he was aboard ship at Havre, and the
disconsolate Janes was one of his fellow-voyagers.

CHAPTER XXV

If a philosopher were set to describe the best and the worst of life, he
would certainly have a considerable choice before him. But amongst the
best he would have to set down love, and amongst the worst he would have
to set down love's disillusion. The curse of age is indifference. With
the increase of the years you come to a time when nothing matters.
Anything which helps hearty youth this way is harmful. In ninety cases
in a hundred age is a crime against the hopes of the world, and nothing
ages like cynicism. This is the beginning of senile decay. And what is
a man to do who has lavished his heart, and has always found that the
woman has played counters of affectation against the sincere gold of
his soul? Obviously he turns cynic, despising himself and his too cheap
emotions; and to cheapen one's own emotions is to play the very devil.
It was written from of old that a house divided against itself cannot
stand, and a man who has learned to loathe one half of his own nature is
not stable. Even that he has a perfect right to do it does not help him.

May Gold had fooled Paul Armstrong. Claudia Belmont had carried on the
game. So had Annette, and so had Gertrude. It was a wise man who wrote
that the net is spread in vain in the sight of any bird, but he wrote
nonsense, all the same. The capturing net is the one to which we are
most accustomed.

So with a heart filled with distrust, and misliking half the world, Paul
travelled across the Atlantic, and sauntered about the United States.
The money question was settled for the time being, if not definitely,
and for a year or two he would have no occasion to think of ways and
means. He got away into the prairies and the mountains, camped out,
shooting and hunting, learned to sit a horse, learned to handle a gun,
to build a tent, and to cook.

T