Then he revolted against this suffering that seemed to him undeserved, disproportionate. He was not a bad fellow; looking into his heart, he could declare truthfully that it was not in him to willingly harm anything--give any one pain. Why should he feel so endlessly mean, so endlessly miserable? He appealed to Minnie, his reasonable Minnie of old, against this state of things. He defended himself to her; she defended him to himself. When all was said, he had at no time done anything to blame, had that day said nothing that was not wise and for the best, that he would not in like case be forced to say over again. He had been taken unawares; he had not expressed himself with tact--he had been fatally slow. The fact remained that the girl could not have stayed by him, setting the whole country-side agog. But if his heart still refused to be at peace about this matter, let it be assured he meant to seek till he found the girl; it must be easy enough to find her, though he had failed that day. Alas! poor little forlorn head, shorn of its great gleaming beauty--poor little discrowned head, at this hour full of what thoughts, God knew! He would make all things right to her; he was extravagantly ready to pay any price; he was lavish of his future, free of all the gods gave him to give. At the same time that he made these protestations to himself and to her, and he was sincere in making them, he knew that Minnie would never look at him again--he knew that she had understood how he was changed with the change in her; it was beyond his governing, but she must be forgiven for not forgiving it. And looking into his man's heart, he wondered at the mystery of it. In that hour of being honest, after revolting at it, reasoning about it, trying to sophisticate it away, he came back always to a hopeless contemplation of it as a simple fact, not to be done away with. In the face of it he might clear himself of all blame, perhaps, but he remained humiliated and full of a vague pity. As he lay in the grass so, plucking heedlessly in the dark at the little tufts, emptied of all pride under the lofty stars, a dreamy mood followed upon what degree of success he had in suppressing feelings he was determined not to endure, so did they hurt! His thoughts in search of soothing travelled back to days before last spring, when he could hardly have conceived what he had this night been suffering. Peaceful period, but without great charm, he decided, loyal to his altered taste. He thought of the past spring, the soft awakening all without and within a man--the tender, vast burgeoning, fluttering, shimmering, outreaching! He judged it sadly from a midsummer night. Not all were flowers that put forth in that mad amenity of nature; no, not all flowers.