It was snowing steadily now; he could hear the faint patter of small, hard flakes on the dry oak leaves over his head. Suddenly some bleached and withered ferns in front of him rustled, and he saw wise, bright eyes looking at him. "I wish I had some nuts for you, bunny," he said--and the bright eyes vanished with a furry whirl through the ferns. He picked up the empty half of a hickory-nut, and turning it over in his fingers, looked at the white grooves left by small sharp teeth. "You little beggars must get pretty hungry in the winter, bunny," he said; "I'll bring a bag of nuts out here for you some day." But while he was talking to the squirrel, he was wrestling with his god. It was characteristic of him that never once in that struggle to justify himself did he use the excuse of Elizabeth's consent. His code, which had allowed him to injure a woman, would not permit him to blame her--even if she deserved it. Instead, over and over he heaped up his own poor defense: "If I had waited, he might have patched it up with her." Over and over the defense crumbled before his eyes: "it was contemptible not to give him the chance to patch it up." Then would come his angry retort: "That's nonsense! Besides it is better, infinitely better, for her to marry me than a poor man like him. I can give her everything,--and love her! God, how I love her. Apart from any selfish consideration, it is a thousand times better for her." For an instant his marrying her seemed actually chivalrous; and at that his god laughed. Blair reddened sharply; to recognize his hypocrisy was the "touch on the hollow of the thigh; and the hollow of the thigh was out of joint"! He pitched the nut away with a vicious fling, and knew, inarticulately, that there was no use lying to himself any longer. With blank eyes he watched the snow piling up on a withered stalk of goldenrod. "I wish it hadn't happened in just the way it did," he conceded;--his god was beginning to prevail!--"but if I had waited, I might have lost her." Then a thought stabbed him: suppose that he should lose her anyhow? Suppose that when she came to herself--the phrase was a confession! suppose she should want to leave him? It was an intolerable idea. "Well, she can't," he told himself, grimly, "she can't, now." His face was dusky with shame, yet when he said that, his lip loosened in a furtively exultant smile. Blair would have been less, or more, than a man if, at that moment, in spite of his shame, he had not exulted. "She's my wife!" he said, through those shamed and smiling lips. Then his eyes narrowed: "And she doesn't care a damn for me."