The last few weeks had altered him more than he knew. Between him and Calvert there was now a sympathy and tenderness which had never existed in Taorna. Farquharson had been a machine then, a magnificent machine which could be relied upon to produce the best work—nothing more. Now he was human. Too human, probably, he thought suddenly, realizing in a flash how his work was tending to the moment when he would reach the Brands’. "Peace after Toyle" was what Evelyn brought, absolute rest of mind and body. A dangerous quality to come in contact with when it belonged to the wife of one’s neighbour. For primitive man may be awakened in even the most hardened diplomatist. And Farquharson was not naturally hard. Love of victory, too, counts—the spirit which makes a man want to carry off the woman he loves in face of danger, and put her before him on his horse and look back laughing with bullets whizzing about them, and a precipice ahead, for sheer love of devilry and adventure and desire to possess the thing he wants. To Evelyn, counting the hours till dawn, and saddened when dawn came because it brought the parting of the ways, it seemed that life, so broad and beautiful only yesterday, had narrowed again into the old grey road without a turning. All that had made life so sweet lately must go now: the little plans, the little projects to help Farquharson, their daily meetings, ...; all that had brought colour into the monotonous road, had made it fragrant and glowing—how fragrant, how glowing she had never realized till now when she must make up her mind to stand aside for evermore; hardest of all, perhaps, possibly to watch another woman in her place. For she could no longer cheat herself with half-truths, and talk of vanity and imagination. Last night the very beating of her heart betrayed her. In the strange inconsequence of memory, her mind went back to five years before, when two Glasgow engineers, who were building a temporary bridge at Comrie, talked slightingly in her presence of "_little Highland burns_," when wise men of the neighbourhood told them that their bridge was built too low, and that they had not allowed for the rising of the floods. For those same little burns took counsel together, biding their time, waiting until a night when all was still, when they suddenly drew the forces of the mountain and swept down the hillside in a mighty torrent, gathering strength as they went, carrying all before them, undismayed, until at last they reached the temporary bridge and tore it from its moorings, to play with it in mid-stream as children play with a broken fragment of wood. So love, once recognized, sweeps all before it, honour, loyalty, faith, a torrent that nothing can withstand, nothing compel or alter but the will of God.... A little book lay open on her writing-table, a frequent companion. It had comforted her before; she wanted comfort now. She opened it at random, and her eyes fell on these words—