had been cloaked, his soul masked, there had been a film before his eyes,
he had worn an armour of selfishness on a life which had no deep
problems, because it had no deep feelings--a life never rising to the
intellectual prowess for which it was fitted, save when under the
stimulus of liquor.

From the moment he had waked from a long seven months' sleep in the hut
on Vadrome Mountain, new deep feelings had come to him as he faced
problems of life. Fighting had begun from that hour--a fighting which
was putting his nature through bitter mortal exercises, yet, too, giving
him a sense of being he had never known. He had now the sweetness of
earning daily bread by the work of his hands; of giving to the poor, the
needy, and the afflicted; of knowing for the first time in his life that
he was not alone in the world. Out of the grey dawn of life a woman's
voice had called to him; the look of her face had said to him: "Viens
ici! Viens ici!"--"Come to me! Come to me!"

But with that call there was the answer of his soul, the desolating cry
of the dispossessed Lear-" Never--never--never--never--never!"

He had not questioned himself concerning Rosalie--had dared not to do so.
But now, as he stood under the great tree, within hand-touch of the old
life, in imminent danger of being thrust back into it, the question of
Rosalie came upon him with all the force of months of feeling behind it.
Thus did he argue with himself:

"Do I love her? And if I love her, what is to be done? Marry her, with
a wife living? Marry her while charged with a wretched crime? Would
that be love? But suppose I never were discovered, and we might live
here for ever, I as 'Monsieur Mallard,' in peace and quiet all the days