prison, now struggling to break the chains that hold it, so tossed
about my love and anger, I turned my face now toward the hill, now
toward the village. The same impulse that caused me to draw into the
darkness of the doorway instead of facing Tim made it impossible for me
to follow him home. Angry though I was, I wanted no quarrel, yet I
feared to meet him lest my temper should burst its bounds. But I had a
bitter wind to deal with, too, and if I could not go home, neither
could I stand longer in the road, turning in my quandary from the
beacon on the hill, where she was, to the light that gleamed in our
window in the village, where he was.

The school-house gave me shelter. I groped my way to my desk and there
sank into my chair, leaned my head on my hands, and closed my eyes. I
wanted to shut out all the world. Here in the friendly darkness, in
the quiet of the night, I could think it all out. I could place myself
on trial, and starting at the beginning, retracing my life step by
step, I would find again the course my best self had laid down for me
to follow. For the moment I had lost that clear way. Blinded by my
seeming woes, I had been groping for it, and I had searched in vain.
But now the dizziness was going, and as I sat there in the darkness, my
eyes closed to shut out even the blackness about me, the light came.

After a long while I looked up to see the moon high over the pines on
the eastward ridge, and its yellow light poured into the room, casting
dim shadows over the white walls, and bringing up before me row on row
of spectre desks. The chair I sat in, the table on which I leaned were
real enough. They were part of my to-day, but that dim-lighted room
was the school-house of my boyhood. The fourth of those spectre desks
measuring back from the stove, was where Tim and I sat day after day
together, with heads bowed over open books and eyes aslant. That was