Perhaps hardest of all to John was the hurt to his pride, to his self-confidence, the reflection that, having set his eye upon a shining goal, he must abandon the march toward it unbeaten, with his strength untested, or with the tests so far made distinctly in his favor. It was hard to think himself a "quitter." And yet he could feel the stir of a noble satisfaction in being a "quitter" for duty’s sake. He remembered with a certain sad pleasure how almost prophetically he had told Mr. Mitchell that it would only be something that would happen to Dick and Tayna that could keep him from going on with his ambition. Now exactly that had come to pass; yet to make immediate surrender of the ambition to which he had devoted himself with such enthusiasm seemed impossible. He knew what he should do—what he intended to do—but he lacked the resolution for the moment. If Bessie were only here! And yet if she were, he would shrink from her presence. He felt just now unworthy to look into those trusting eyes of blue. This time he must face his destiny alone. His head sank low. His hands were clasped above it, as they had been that night when he was stricken blind. The world was dark before him. Now, as then, he felt sorry for himself. In a very few months a great many things had happened to him that had wrenched him violently. He had been racked by doubts and inflamed by mysterious emotions. He had hoped and he had dared; he had struggled; he had gained some things and lost some; but he had survived, and on the whole was conquering. Now came the heaviest blow, as it seemed, that could possibly fall upon his head,—and just in the very hour when the upward way was clearing! His face was flat upon the page he had meant to fill with words of love and help to Rose. Above him, on the wall, was the sheet of faded yellow paper that bore his just amended motto. Two pins, loosened no doubt when he changed the word on the legend, had been whipped out by the breeze which swept in through the open window, and this breeze now fluttered the free end of the yellow sheet insistently like a pennant, so that the distracted man lifted his clouded eyes and read once again, as if to make sure: "Eternal Loyalty is the Price of Success." "Loyalty to what?" he demanded fiercely of himself. To his ambition? Or to two little growing lives that trusted and believed in him? To put the question like that was to answer it. John rose abruptly, snatched the legend from the wall, crumpled it as he had the envelope, and cast it on the floor. He didn’t need it any more. "And yet," he reflected after a moment, "why not?"