As the last flame died down upon the bed of red-gray coals, Rex woke with a quiver of chilliness, crept close to the embers and lay down again. Caleb, first making sure the movement had not disturbed Desirée, fell to envying the dog. The cold had sank into his very bones. The impossibility of shifting his stilted position galled him, as the endless hours crept by. Cramped, half frozen, racked with the agony of stiffening muscles and of blood that could no longer circulate, he clenched his teeth over his underlip from sheer pain. The girl, who at first had lain feather-like in his arms, now seemed heavy enough to tear loose his throbbing biceps. Nor would he, for all the physical anguish of his plight, move her body one hair’s breadth. And so, like a sleepless Galahad before some old-world forest shrine,--like Stylites on his pillar,--worshipping yet in infinite suffering,--he sat the long night through. At length his body grew numb, his blood congested. Aching discomfort and cold had wrought their worst on his frame of iron and had left it hardily impervious to further ill. His mind, when bodily surcease came, awoke to new activity. His thoughts, at first disjointed and wonderingly happy, settled down soon to their wonted sharp clearness. Then it was he coolly weighed this thing he had done. It was like him to array in battle-order all the contrary arguments of the case; that with the brute force of his domination he might batter them to pieces. And a long array they were. First,--his own social yearnings, his golden dreams of a secure place within the inner charmed circle of Granite society! The only road of ingress had been through marriage with a daughter of that circle. Preferably with Letty Standish. Now all that was out of the question. Desirée herself was popular. But he knew she could not drag up to social prominence a man like himself. She had not family nor other prestige for such a tremendous uplift. Nor, as she herself had said, did she value such position. Had she married Hawarden, Caine or any of a half dozen other eligible Granite men, Desirée’s own place in society would straightway have become more than assured. With Conover as a husband, she must take rank--or lack of rank--with him. Nothing higher could be in store for her. Forever, Caleb must assail the circle in vain, or else sink back content with his own lot far outside its radius. The very fact that he was married,--and married to an outsider who would not second his attack,--would render the walls of society impregnable against him. As a single man,--with money and with the power to use the money as a battering ram,--he had already knocked great breaches in the fortifications. Now he could never pass triumphant through those gaps.