All this philosophy aside, Cissie's appearance just in the nick of his inspiration, her surprising proposal of marriage, and his refusal, had accomplished one thing: it had committed Peter to the program he had outlined to the girl. Indeed, there seemed something fatalistic in such a concatenation of events. Siner wondered whether or not he would have obeyed his vision without this added impulse from Cissie. He did not know; but now, since it had all come about just as it had, he suspected he would have been neglectful. He felt as if a dangerous but splendid channel had been opened before his eyes, and almost at the same instant a hand had reached down and directed his life into it. This fancy moved the mulatto. As he got himself ready for bed, he kept thinking: "Well, my life is settled at last. There is nothing else for me to do. Even if this should end terribly for me, as Cissie imagines, my life won't be wasted." Next morning Peter Siner was awakened by old Rose Hobbett thrusting her head in at his door, staring around, and finally, seeing Peter in bed, grumbling: "Why is you still heah, black man?" The secretary opened his eyes in astonishment. "Why shouldn't I be here?" "Nobody wuz 'speckin' you to be heah." The crone withdrew her head and vanished. Peter wondered at this unaccustomed interest of Rose, then hurried out of bed, supposing himself late for breakfast. A dense fog had come up from the river, and the moisture floating into his open windows had dampened his whole room. Peter stepped briskly to the screen and began splashing himself. It was only in the midst of his ablutions that he remembered his inspiration and resolve of the previous evening. As he squeezed the water over his powerfully molded body, he recalled it almost impersonally. It might have happened to some third person. He did not even recall distinctly the threads of the logic which had lifted him to such a Pisgah, and showed him the whole South as a new and promised land. However, he knew that he could start his train of thought again, and again ascend the mountain. Floating through the fog into his open window came the noises of the village as it set about living another day, precisely as it had lived innumerable days in the past. The blast of the six-o'clock whistle from the planing-mill made the loose sashes of his windows rattle. Came a lowing of cows and a clucking of hens, a woman's calling. The voices of men in conversation came so distinctly through the pall that it seemed a number of persons must be moving about their morning work, talking and shouting, right in the Renfrew yard.