She shook hands, saying nothing,--then went in, and shut the door.

Gaunt turned away, and hurried down the hill, his heart throbbing and
aching against his bony side with the breathless pain which women, and
such men as he, know. Her hand was cold, as she gave it to him; some
pain had chilled her blood: was it because she bade him good-bye
forever, then? Was it? He knew it was not: his instincts were keen as
those of the old Pythoness, who read the hearts of men and nations by
surface-trifles. Gaunt joined the old man, and began talking loosely and
vaguely, as was his wont,--of the bad road, and the snow-water oozing
through his boots,--not knowing what he said. She did not care; he would
not cheat himself: when he told her to-night what he meant to do, she
heard it with a cold, passive disapproval,--with that steely look in her
dark eyes that shut him out from her. "You are sincere, I see; but you
are not true to yourself or to God": that was all she said. She would
have said the same, if he had gone with her brother. It was a sudden
stab, but he forgave her: how could she know that God Himself had laid
this blood-work on him, or the deathly fight his soul had waged against
it? She did not know,--nor care. Who did?

The man plodded doggedly through the melting snow, with a keener sense
of the cold biting through his threadbare waistcoat, of the solitude and
wrong that life had given him,--his childish eyes turning to the gray
depth of night, almost fierce in their questioning,--thinking what a
failure his life had been. Thirty-five years of struggle with poverty
and temptation! Ever since that day in the blacksmith's shop in Norfolk,
when he had heard the call of the Lord to go and preach His word, had he
not striven to choke down his carnal nature,--to shut his eyes to all
beauty and love,--to unmake himself, by self-denial, voluntary pain? Of