not think. And yet, despite himself, that keen, unflagging brain of his would think.
He believed that he had faced this matter fully enough in that until the future becomes the present, he had not realised the last two months. Now he knew, as every man knows, what it meant to him. The fire of Andree's words and her beauty maddened his hot blood, and he knew that it would do so again. And he knew that the chill of common-sense would continue to thrust in between, congealing that hot blood as it was doing now. What was it that he meant to do? Why did he mean to do it? Andree would never understand; never realise. She swung after him as unconcernedly now as she had done all the way up from Herschel. Life meant no more to her than the day. Death meant no more. It was a vague thing which she would not think of; which she could not think of because all greatness had no meaning for her. She was stupid, utterly and entirely stupid, and he knew it. And those mocking words which he had said to Hensham about her beauty were true, and he knew that also.
Without that inconsequent alluring wild-wood bloom of her no man would ever have looked twice at Grange's Andree. He would not. If Andree had been like Moosta to look at he would not be doing this now. Life had hardened him too much through the work which he had had to do for ordinary pity to obscure his judgment.
What was controlling him now? It was not pity. It was not love. It was not a sense of justice. It was just that lawless call of the will-o'-the-wisp again. It was the old breakdown. That it would not be for more than the moment he knew well.. There was neither rule nor convention in this world would ever bind Grange's Andree. And he would not keep her with him and guard her. He knew himself too well to think that. And if he let her go what was there for her then? Tempest had said: "I hold you responsible for her till the end of time." Tempest had said: "Death will be easier for her than life." If Tempest who loved her had chosen so for her; if the natural law of punishment for crime had chosen so for her, by what right did he interfere?
He tramped on, breaking trail grimly, with the dull dusk
