seize_? It was the same old question that had split every country up
into revolution. And closest of all, keenest of all arguments, the new
influence that had come into his life, possessing it, obsessing it. He
might put her out of his thoughts as a possibility. That would not
dull the edge of his own hunger. By staying on he barred all
possibility of ultimate happiness, perhaps her happiness: yet, if he
abandoned the fight for right, he would be unworthy of her. Sooner or
later she would know, and, though she might remain mute, was she the
one to make semblance of what she did not feel? If the light died from
her eye, it would die from his life. He was not a Silenus to guzzle
hog-like over husks when the life had gone. Besides--Wayland laughed
aloud--the idea of her nature permitting a Silenus near enough to
breathe the same atmosphere that she breathed was inconceivable. There
was one chance--one chance only--Get the issue before the People,
squarely, fairly, openly before the People; awaken the People; mass the
law of the snow flake to the mighty rush of the avalanche; let the
People know, force the People to pronounce the verdict. Wayland
thought of Bat inside the cabin--, and laughed bitterly. He rose and
began pacing the edge of the Ridge. There he was, back in the old
hopeless circle.

Her touch had wrapped him in a vision world; but across the clearness
of the vision now somehow obtruded the quiet cynicism, the genial scoff
of the Senator's arguments, leaving fierce physical unrest and confused
cross-currents of desire. A mist seemed to blurr all life. The
hemlocks no longer chanted riotous gladness. There was a dirge
to-night of futility, monotonous age-old eons of useless effort, the
useless fall of the forest giant to the dry rot of slug and insect. It
was as if Wayland's spirit stood back and listened to the conflicting
contentions of two other men, the one who wanted to breast the stream