He flung himself vigorously at work, after that. There was woman, a snare, and work, the sane alternative, there was the zest of it, the mere exercise of it to sweat evil humors out of a man. By now he knew all that Bradshaw’s factory could teach him, and, by his inspections of modern factories, much more; but his own place was not quite ready, his organization was complete on paper and till the day came for applying his knowledge, time had to be filled somehow and as well at Bradshaw’s as anywhere else. Phoebe found herself neglected. He did not ride, or, if he did, it was alone. It came to her that she had made too sure of him; he hadn’t mentioned marriage, he was drifting from her. What could she do to bind him to her? Then he relented. She was suffering and he thought, in a tender mood, that it hurt him to see her suffer. Wasn’t he making a mountain of a molehill, wasn’t he unjust to blame her for the consequences of his weakness? He was a most chivalrous gentleman when he next invited her to ride with him, and she accepted, meekly. There lay the difference between the then and the now. Then they were comrades, now he condescended and he did not know it. But it was still his thought that Phoebe was to be his wife, and in the comfortable glow of forgiveness, in horse-exercise on a pleasant afternoon with one whose complexion was proof against any high light, who was a plucky rider and his accustomed fellow on these rides, they achieved again a genuine companionship. His doubts and her fears alike dissolved in what seemed the mellowed infallibility of that perfect afternoon. Two other riders came in sight, meeting them, along the road--a lady, followed by her groom. Dorothy Verners sitting her horse as if she had been cradled on it, straight, tall Dorothy whose beauty was so different from Phoebe’s soft prettiness. Dorothy had beauty like a birthright. She came of generations of women whose first duty was to be admirable, who had, as it were, experimented long ago with beauty and had fixed its lines for their successors. Where Phoebe suggested a hasty improvisation of comeliness, where, in her, comeliness was unexpected and almost an impertinence, in Dorothy it was authentic and assured. Had Reuben, seeing Phoebe in the magic vision of his love, called her a thoroughbred because she took a fall without blubbering? It was a compliment, and he had meant it. He had meant it because she had, surprisingly, not flinched. But of the real thoroughbreds, of those who were, without compliment, thoroughbred, one would take for granted that they did not flinch and the surprise would be not that they did not flinch, but if they did. He had not been seeing Dorothy Verners lately; he had been forgetting her authenticity; and he hadn’t the slightest doubt, watching her approach, that he belonged with her order, that he was an aristocrat who, if he stooped to trade, stooped only to rise again. He saw himself through his own eyes.