A cold drizzle of rain had brought dusk on an hour before its time.
Twilight was closing in on a sodden day. From the big Ohio city to the
smaller Kentucky towns, poured a stream of tired humanity. Belated
shoppers, business men, workers of all kinds hurried through the murky
soot-laden air, each hastening to some invisible goal.

To Dan, watching with somber eyes from his niche above the wharf, it
seemed that they were all going home to little lamp-lit cottages where
women and children awaited them. A light in the window and somebody
waiting! The old dream of his boyhood that only a few days ago had seemed
about to come true!

Instead, he had been caught up in a hurricane and swept out to sea. His
anchors had been his love, his work, and his religion, and none of them
held. The factory, to which he had given the best of his brain and his
body, for which he had dreamed and aspired and planned, was a nightmare
to him. Mrs. Purdy and the church activities, which had loomed so large
in his life, were but fleeting, unsubstantial shadows.

Only one thing in the wide universe mattered now to him, and that was
Nance. Over and over he rehearsed his final scene with her, searching
for some word of denial or contrition or promise for the future. She had
never lied to him, and he knew she never would. But she had stood before
him in angry defiance, refusing to defend herself, declining his help,
and letting him go out of her life without so much as lifting a finger
to stop him.

His heavy eyes, which had been following the shore lights, came back to
the bridge, attracted by the movement of a woman leaning over one of
the embrasures near him. He had been vaguely aware for the past five