When at last Reynolds grew calm enough to examine the situation somewhat in the light of cold reason, he saw that Agnes, not himself, must bear the heaviest load of any one connected therewith. He knew that she loved him and that, loving him, she would devote the rest of her life to one whom she could not love, but to whom the laws of man and of duty, and every dictate of a pure conscience, bound her. Viewing it thus, his life seemed to end in a _cul-de-sac_. It had been a barren life, for the most part, so far, even worse than barren; it had been evil in no small degree. Conscience leaped upon him and shook him as a wild beast shakes and worries its prey. He felt its fangs and welcomed the agony they inflicted, as a relief from the terrible numbness that had taken possession of him and beside which any pain was pleasure. It was almost dark when he went back to the station and entered the little waiting-room, where Dan had deposited his traveling-bag, and sat down on a bench to wait for the train. Several persons were there, impatient to be going, as travelers by rail usually are, but Reynolds was not in sympathy with their mood. He felt no concern about the train, whether ten minutes or ten hours late. Why should he not be just as content while waiting for a train as while doing any thing else? What more interest was it to him to be going than it was to be staying? The thought of the cabin and its household, of White's oddities and humorous absurdities, and of Milly's faithful patience and plebeian sweetness and sincerity, did not draw him: in fact it repelled him. Why go back there at all? Why not go to England and join Moreton, or to Egypt and engage with Doctor Blank (another friend of his) in his scientific explorations? Then again came conscience, with waving mane and flaming eyes, roaring and baring its fangs. He could see no promise of escape from the torment. But why should he struggle? He got up and walked to and fro, as did the other restless waiters for the train. Strange what tricks the brain plays under every sort of strain and torture. The turmoil of his thoughts, like some tempest-tumbled sea, kept tossing lightly on its surface as the sea might have tossed a cork, those simple rhymes about "The light of her eyes And the dew of her lips, Where the moth never flies And the bee never sips."