He was unaware of the day wheeling splendidly through its golden hours, of the sun swinging across the narrow rift of the valley. At long intervals he heard muffled hoof-beats passing on the dusty road above. He watched a trout slip lazily out from under the bank, and lie headed upstream, slowly waving its fins. It recalled the trout he had left on the porch of Hollidew's farmhouse on the night when he had attempted to ... seduce ... Lettice! The details of that occasion returned vivid, complete, unsparing. It was a memory profoundly regrettable because of an obscure connection with Lettice's present danger; it too--although he was unable to discover why it should--took on the dark aspect of having helped to bring the other about. As the memory of that night recurred to him he became conscious of an obscure, traitorous force lurking within him, betraying him, leading his complacency into foolish and fatal paths, into paths which totally misrepresented him.... He would not really have gone away with Meta Beggs. He was a better man than all this would indicate! Yet--consider the result; he might as well have committed a foul crime. But, in the end, it would be all right. Doctors always predicted the darkest possibilities. He turned and saw Doctor Pelliter striding up the slope to where his team was hitched on the public road. A swift resentment swept over Gordon Makimmon as he realized that the other had purposely avoided him. He rose to demand attention, to call; but, instinctively, he stifled his voice. The doctor stopped at the road, and saw him. Gordon waved toward the house, and the other nodded curtly. XX He passed through the dining room to the inner doorway, where he brushed by Mrs. Caley. Her face was as harsh and twisted as an old root. He proceeded directly to the bed. "Lettice," he said; "Lettice." Then he saw the appalling futility of addressing that familiar name to the strange head on the pillow. Lettice had gone: she had been destroyed as utterly as though a sinister and ruthless magic had blasted every infinitesimal quality that had been hers. A countenance the color of glazed white paper seemed to hold pools of ink in the hollows of its eyes. The drawn mouth was the color of stale milk. Nothing remained to summon either pity or sorrow. The only possible emotion in the face of that revolting human disaster was an incredulous and shocked surprise. It struck like a terrible jest, a terrible, icy reminder, into the forgetful warmth of living; it mocked at the supposed majesty of suffering, tore aside the assumed dignity, the domination, of men; it tampered ferociously with the beauty, the pride, the innocent and gracious pretensions, of youth, of women.