All his life, since the day he first entered the office of Weston & Hill, came to him. All the many snubs he had received, all the disappointments he had met, all the weeks, months, and years of monotonous drudgery in that office, all the "fool's paradise" hours he had passed with Ethel Sherman, all the harsh bitterness he had heard from the lips of Jack Nickerson--and now the new life, new ambition, and new influence that had come to him--passed in review. And as he leisurely puffed his cigar, looking the while out upon the boundless expanse that, like an eternity, lay before him, he saw himself as he was, and knew that as a man of honor and for his own peace of mind, he must choose between two ways. That he could not escape the island for months and perhaps for years, he saw clearly, and if he remained, as remain he must if he were to win success in this new project, he must inevitably become one and a part of the social and hard-working life of the people with whom he mingled, sharing their hopes and encouraging their ambitions. And if he did, could he go on holding himself aloof from all tender impulses, living the life of a recluse, as inflexible as the granite he quarried, and as void of sentiment? Winn Hardy besides being impulsive was endowed with a vein of romance, and saw and felt the poetic side of all things. The whispers of winds in the pine trees, flowers that grew wild in out of the way nooks, birds singing, bees gathering honey, squirrels hiding their winter store of nuts, the sea in all its moods, clouds sailing across a summer sky and all that was beautiful in nature appealed to him. This island whose frowning cliffs faced the ocean billows so defiantly, the placid harbor with its rippled sandy shore, the old tide mill an ancient ruin, the dark thickets of spruce between the rolling ledges of granite, and the weird gorge where this girl had hid herself, each and all seemed to him as so many bits of poetry. Then the peculiar and romantic fact of her going to such a picturesque spot, out of sight and sound of even the island people, and beyond that the wonderful sweetness and pathos of her simple music, all appealed to him as to but few. It was as if he felt in her a kinship of soul, an echo of his own poetic nature, a response to his own ideals in life, with a face like a flower, lips like two rosebuds, and eyes like a Madonna.