He had neither shame for his
manhood nor alarm for his pride till he heard himself panting, panting
raucously, with a sound that was neither a moan nor a sob, but which
racked him convulsively, while there was a hot smarting in his eyes.
But in the end he found relief and worked his way out to a sort of
victory. That is to say, he came back to see, as he had seen all along,
that there was one clear duty to be done. If he loved Olivia Guion with
a love that was worthy to win, it must also be with a love that could
lose courageously. This was no new discovery. It was only a fact which
loneliness and the craving to be something to her, as she was everything
to him, had caused him for the moment to lose sight of. But he came back
to it with conviction. It was conviction that gave him confidence, that
calmed him, enabling him, as a clock somewhere struck eleven, to get up,
shake the sea-spray from his person, and return to his hotel.
It was while he was going to bed that Rodney Temple's words came back to
him, as they did from time to time: "Some call it God."
"I wonder if it is--God," he questioned.
* * * * *
But the misgiving that beset him, as he motored out of Havre in the
morning, was of another kind.
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