Wayne stood uncertainly on the boarding-house steps, glancing up and down the bleak, deserted street. The night was cold and a keen wind whipped his unbuttoned ulster round him. The woman watching him through the blind, so near that he was within arm’s reach of her, felt the tragedy of this hour. Her sense of responsibility for one man’s life had prompted her confession in the ugly little parlour; but there stood another, whose need of her was not less great. She had sent Wayne Craighill away and she must always think of him as he stood there, outside the threshold of her life as it was to be, blown upon by winds of destiny. A bit of paper, whirling in the blast, was not more a thing of chance than he. A succession of trolleys passed as Wayne lingered, staring out upon the street. He was hardly conscious of the conflict that raged within, the turbulent spirit, the appetite already thwarted once to-day, uncoiling like a serpent and demanding to be satisfied. His heart was in rebellion against whatever gods he knew. No one in all the city was so lone as he; but there was always the great resource. He glanced toward the heart of the city; a car was approaching and he took a step; it was approaching rapidly and he started to run. It stopped with a harsh grinding of the brakes, and he put his foot on the step, then swung round, leaving an angry conductor swearing on the platform, and walked rapidly toward home. Jean, waiting at the window, saw and read with relief the meaning of his changed decision. The spirit of the storm was not fiercer than that in his own heart as he strode away and as his blood warmed with the exercise he began to enjoy his buffetting in the gale. He had started up the long avenue toward the East End, widening at every step the distance between himself and the haunts he had known in drink. The internal struggle was less strenuous, now that his body fought the gale; and the remembrance of Jean nestled bird-like in his heart. She was a woman, unlike any that had ever been before in the world, and she had opened her soul to him for a fleeting glimpse and closed the door forever. He strode on until midnight, with the bare boughs of the trees bending over him under the lash of the blast; and he found himself at last quite near home, and suddenly tired and weak, for he had eaten nothing since his slight luncheon. When he had gained the house and let himself in he flung himself down in a chair in the hall, and sat there, too weary to go further. The weakness of hunger was a new sensation and he felt so strange that he wondered if he were ill, and nothing that had happened seemed real or possible.