"Now," he said, "I do see myself just as I am. Yes, I did shoot at
you. Yes, I think I meant to kill you. I must have meant to kill you.
That's the truth. For the second time I'm a murderer. Yet now, as
God lives, even if I am down in the dust, I'll lay hold of my stars.
I'm going to walk out of your lives so that they can shape themselves
to their own good ends. Sylvie can shape yours with you, Pete." He
hesitated a moment. "If a coward, a murderer, can say 'God bless you,'
take that blessing!"

He picked up his gun and shuffled across the floor, flinching aside
from Bella as though he could bear no further touch or word, and went
out of the door, letting in the brightness of the sunrise.

Pete had sunk into a chair, faint from the shock and weakness of his
wound; and Sylvie bent over him. For a minute, in great and bitter
loneliness Bella stood and watched them; then she followed Hugh.

He had put down his gun and gone slowly up from the hollow and was
walking along the river-bank. He had the look of a man who strolls
in meditation. When he came to his boat where it lay near the roots
of the three big pines, he turned it over--he had been mending its
bottom the morning of yesterday--and began to push it down toward
the plunging stream. The glitter of morning took all the swirlings
and ripplings and plungings of the swift water in its golden hands.
Hugh steadied the boat. Above him on the bank Bella spoke quietly.

"Hugh," she said, "look up at me. What are you going to do?"

He lifted his face, still holding to the boat.