e, come away."

But he came back in the night and sat beside her, and remained there
till the sun grew bright, and then through another day and night,
until they bore her out of the little house by the river to the frozen
hill-side.

Sitting here in this winter desolation Jaspar Hume once more beheld
these scenes of twenty years before and followed himself, a poor
dispensing clerk in a doctor's office, working for that dream of
achievement in which his mother believed; for which she hoped. And
following further the boy that was himself, he saw a friendless
first-year man at college, soon, however, to make a friend of Clive
Lepage, and to see always the best of that friend, being himself so
true. At last the day came when they both graduated together in science,
a bright and happy day, succeeded by one still brighter, when they both
entered a great firm as junior partners. Afterwards befell the meeting
with Rose Varcoe; and he thought of how he praised his friend Lepage
to her, and brought him to be introduced to her. He recalled all those
visions that came to him when, his professional triumphs achieved, he
should have a happy home, and happy faces by his fireside. And the face
was to be that of Rose Varcoe, and the others, faces of those who should
be like her and like himself. He saw, or rather felt, that face clouded
and anxious when he went away ill and blind for health's sake. He did
not write to her. The doctors forbade him that. He did not ask her to
write, for his was so steadfast a nature that he did not need letters
to keep him true; and he thought she must be the same. He did not
understand a woman's heart, how it needs remembrances, and needs to give
remembrances.

Hume's face in the light of this fire seemed calm and cold, yet behind
it was an agony of memory--the memory of the day when he discovered that
Lepage was married to Rose, and that the trusted friend had grown famous
and well-to-do on the offspring of his brain. His first thought had been
one of fierce determination to expose this man who had falsified all
trust. But then came the thought of the girl, and, most of all, there
came the words of his dying mother, "Be good, my boy, and God will make
you great"; and for his mother's sake he had compassion on the girl, and
sought no restitution from her husband. And now, ten years later, he
did not regret that he had stayed his hand. The world had ceased to call
Lepage a genius. He had not fulfilled