In their general aspect the bridge-building weeks and months had been uneventful, or, at least, unexciting; long working days made short by a keen interest in his chosen profession; the good will, early won, of his associates on the engineering staff; clipped words of approval now and then--progress markers, these--from his chief, Grimsby, a saturnine man-driver who cracked the whip oftener than he praised, and who seemed to enjoy to the fullest extent the confidence of the boss of bosses, Eben Grillage. Only once in the nine months had David taken time off; a scant three days in December, two of them travel-spoiled, and the one in between--Christmas Day, it was--spent with his father and sister in the Middleboro home. Partly he went to keep his conditional promise to the blind one; but underlying the fraternal motive there was another. Twice during the previous summer he had written to Judith Fallon, conceiving it to be no less than a binding duty. There had been no reply, but the second letter had been returned to him with the postal legend, “No such person at the address given,” stamped upon the envelope. His twenty-four-hour Christmas stay in Middleboro gave him little chance to make inquiries; but few inquiries were needed. The Fallons had sold their cottage in Judsontown and moved away, leaving no word by which they could be traced. Also, there was a story, not vouched for by David’s informant, that there had been trouble of some sort in the Foundries offices, with a big Irish foreman smashing his way into Mr. Thomas Judson’s private room and assaulting its occupant. With this new barb to rankle, David went back to his work at Coulee du Sac saddened and depressed, and grievously weighted with the sense of responsibility. He found no difficulty in believing the story of the explosion in the Judson offices, and was well able to supply the missing details. Fallon’s quarrel was the deadliest a father could have, and the only wonder was that he had not committed a murder. During his nine months’ isolation at Coulee du Sac, David had met the Vallory benefactor only a few times; and the benefactor’s daughter not at all. For the lack of the social opportunity he was grateful rather than sorry. In the light of the Judith Fallon tragedy he was beginning to question his right to make love to Virginia Grillage, even if the magic circle could be broken into; or if not to question the right, to realize the immense and humiliating barrier which must always exist between a man with a tragedy in his past and a woman to whom that past should be as a pane of glass. And the height of the barrier was not lessened by the thought that, in the last analysis, he was culpable only to the extent of having been bat-blind to the temperamental abysses yawning for the Judith Fallons. A great love might condone the blindness, but no pure-minded woman could ever be made to believe that it was total.