province since they are for those who still need crude rules. To the
scribes, and still more to them that sold doves, Christ was a brawler.

Rather than break that glass he would not stir. What were the race and
public opinion to him compared with her spirit? His tenets must make an
exception for her. These things were negligible. All that mattered was
himself and Hazel; his passion, Hazel's freedom; his longing for
husbandhood and fatherhood, her elvish incapacity for wifehood and
motherhood. He suddenly detested himself for the rosy pictures he had
seen. He was utterly abased at the knowledge that he had really meant
at one moment to enforce his rights, to lift the latch. The selfish use
of strength always seemed to him a most despicable thing. From all
points he surveyed his crisis with shame. He had made his decision; but
he knew how easy it would have been to make the opposite one. How easy
and how sweet! He stayed where he was for a long time, too tired to get
up, weary with a conflict that was hardly yet begun. Then he heard his
mother calling, and got up, closing the door as one surrenders a dream.
He still held in one hand the bunch of rosy tulips he had bought for
Hazel at the show. They hung their heads.

'Oh, my dear boy,' said Mrs. Marston, 'I've called and better called,
and no answer! Where were you?'

Edward might have said with truth, 'In hell.' He only said: 'In a
valley of this restless mind.'

'What valley, dear? Oh, no valley, only a poem?' How very peculiar!
Dear, dear! she thought; I hope all this isn't turning his brain; it
seemed so like nonsense what he said. 'You look so pale, my dear, and
so distraught,' she went on; 'I think you want a--'