And then settled upon him again his wonder at the inexorability of things, that a man could not escape the general laws because he willed to live outside them. He was bound round by necessity. Merely because he would not take a mate, he was not exempt from crying out for her. And as the day went on and the vividness of his first high vision faded, his mind went back to Peter and the incredible truth that Peter also knew he could make her happy. The cloud of jealousy darkened again, and he met earth pangs and strangled them. But as he slew them, more were born, and lying there in the fern he hated his brother and his brother's body, born to regnancy. MacLeod, too, appeared before his inward vision, wholesome, well-equipped, riding the earth as Apollo drives the horses of the sun. Him, too, he hated, and for Rose's sake longed again to put him away with his own hands out of the air she breathed. Spent by his passions, he lingered there in the coolness of the unheeding woods while the afternoon gloomed into night. * * * * * Madam Fulton sat on the veranda, thinking sadly. She found herself puzzled by one thing most of all. Several times a day she had asked Billy Stark, "Do you really believe there's anything in that notion about money's being tainted?" "Don't fret yourself," he counseled her, in his kind voice; but she would sit wrinkling her brows and putting the question again to herself, if not to him. "The trouble is, Billy," she had said, this morning, "I get so puzzled. It's like trying to learn a new language when you're old. My eyes are too blurred to see the accents. My ears are dulled. There's that girl that comes looking like an angel and says she's a sinner. I thought she might be a comfort; but no, if you please. She just looks Electra in the face and says, 'I'm as good as the best, only I prefer to do things in my own way.' I wish Electra hadn't made me so frightfully self-conscious." But smile at it all she might, something had wrought upon her. She looked older and more frail, a pathetic figure now, leaning forward in a ruminating dream, and reminding Billy Stark, in a hundred unconsidered ways, of the shortness of the time before she should be gone. His heart ached. He had truly loved her in his youth, and afterwards, in other fashions, for many years. As she sat there in her daze of past and present, she was aware that a tall white figure stood before her in the sun. She recalled herself with a start from those never-to-be-explored bounds, and came awake, humorously frightened at the thought that here, judging from the height and whiteness, was an angel come to make remarks upon tainted money. But it was only Electra. "The next thing to it," said Madam Fulton, with her broad-awake smile. "What did you say, grandmother?" asked Electra. "Nothing, my dear. What were you going to say? Sit down. You dazzle me in that sun."