He crushed the yellow paper in his hands, and turning back, sat down heavily upon the steps of the veranda, staring stupidly ahead of him. If this were true, what did it mean to him? Out of the hundred thoughts assailing him one only was clear and distinct. It meant that he was free! He turned the telegram over in his fingers, touching it with the look of one who sees visions. Free. His home--his pretty home--his own again, with Dora, who grew daily more like her mother, as his little housekeeper. Free from that tempestuous presence which repelled even while it attracted. Free from the endless scenes, the tiresome bickerings, the futile jealousies, the fierce reproaches and the fierce caresses, both of which wearied him equally now. He had scarcely known how all these things which he bore in silence had worn and weighed upon him, but he knew at last. The measure of the relief was the measure of the pressure also. The tears trickled weakly down his cheeks, and he buried his face in his hands as if to hide his thankfulness even from himself. The prospect overwhelmed him. No boy’s delight nor man’s joy had ever been so sweet as this. When he looked up, the pale November sunlight seemed to hold for him a promise more alluring than that of all the May-time suns that ever shone--the promise of a quiet life. As he accustomed himself to this thought, there came others less pleasant. The preeminently distasteful features of the situation began to raise their heads and hiss at him like a coil of snakes. He shrank nervously from the gossip and the publicity. This was a hideous, repulsive thing to come into the lives of upright people who had thought to order their ways according to the laws of God and man. It was only Julie’s due to say she had intended that. But it had come and must be met. Julie was MacDonald’s wife, not his--not his. The only thing to be done was to accept the situation quietly. He knew that his own compensation was ample--no price could be too great to pay for this new joy of freedom--but he shivered a little when he thought of Julie with her incongruous devotion to the customary and the respectable. It would hurt Julie cruelly, but there was no one to blame and no help for it. And MacDonald could take her away into the far new West and make her forget this miserable interlude. He knew that for MacDonald, who was of a different fibre from himself, Julie’s charm had been sufficient and enduring. Whatever might be the explanation of his long absence, Applegate did not doubt that the charm still endured. And, in the end, even they themselves would forget this unhappy time which was just ahead of them, and its memory would cease to seem a shame and become a regret, whose bitterness the passing years would lessen tenderly.