fear the last must be the true solution.

Such were some of the queries I silently struggled with, and they were
rendered more acute by that deepening interest which I now confessed to
myself I was feeling toward her who inspired them. It may be
fashionable nowadays to sneer at love, yet certain it is, the rare
personality of this Edith Brennan had reached and influenced me in
those few hours we had been thrown together as that of no other woman
had ever done. Possibly this was so because the long years in camp and
field had kept me isolated from all cultured and refined womanhood.
This may, indeed, have caused me to be peculiarly susceptible to the
beauty and purity of this one. I know not; I am content to give facts,
and leave philosophy to others. My life has ever been one of action, of
intense feeling; and there in the road that day, standing bareheaded in
the sun, I was clearly conscious of but one changeless fact, that I
loved Edith Brennan with every throb of my heart, and that there was
enmity, bitter and unforgiving, between me and the man within who bore
her name. Whatever he might be to her I rejoiced to know that he hated
me with all the unreasoning hatred of jealousy. I had read it in his
eyes, in his words, in his manner; and the memory of its open
manifestation caused me to smile, as I hoped for an hour when we should
meet alone and face to face. How she regarded him I was unable as yet
to tell, but his love for her was plainly apparent in every glance and
word.

As I was thus thinking, half in despair and half in hope, the two came
out from the house together; and it pleased me to note how immediately
her eyes sought for me, and how she lifted her hand to shade them from
the glare of the sun, so that she might see more clearly. Her companion
appeared to ignore my presence utterly, and gazed anxiously up and down