She managed to give him the assurance he sought, her desperate, passionate voice grown gentle and quiet again. But she was too tired and spent to be comforted. For a long time she lay so still that he became alarmed, thinking she must have fainted again, and drew closer to her to listen to her breathing; at first there was a little catch in it, betraying sobs not yet wholly controlled, then gradually it grew calm and even; she had fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion. Austin, sitting motionless beside her, found the night one of purification and dedication. To men of Thomas's type, slow of wit, steady and stolid and unemotional, the soil gives much of her own peaceful wholesomeness. But those like Austin, with finer intellects, higher ambitions, and stronger passions, often fare ill at her hands. Their struggles towards education and the refinements of life are balked by poverty and the utter fatigue which comes from overwork; while their search for pleasure often ends in a knowledge and experience of vices so crude and tawdry that men of greater wealth and more happy experience would turn from them in disgust, not because they were more moral, but because they could afford to be more fastidious. Between Broadway and the "main street" of Wallacetown, and other places of its type--small railroad or manufacturing centres, standing alone in an otherwise purely agricultural community--the odds in favor of virtue, not to say decency, are all in favor of Broadway; and Wallacetown, to the average youth of Hamstead, represents the one opportunity for a "show," "something to drink," and "life" in general. Sylvia had unlocked the door of material opportunity for Austin; but she had done far more than this. She had given him the vision of the higher things that lay beyond that, and the desire to attain them. Further than that, neither she nor any other woman could help him. The future, to make or mar, lay now within his own hands. And in the same spirit of consecration with which the knights of old prayed that they might attain true chivalry during the long vigil before their accolade, Austin kept his watch that night, and made his vow that the future, in spite of the discouragements and mistakes and failures which it must inevitably contain, should be undaunted by obstacles, and clean of lust and high of purpose. The wind and rain ceased, the clouds grew less heavy, and at last, just before dawn, a few stars shone faintly in the clearing sky; then the sun rose in a blaze of glory. Sylvia had not moved, and lay with one arm under her dark head, the undried tears still on her cheeks. Austin lifted her gently, and started towards the highroad with her in his arms. She stirred slightly, opened her eyes and smiled, then lifted her hands and clasped them around his neck. "It'll be easier to carry me that way," she murmured drowsily. "Austin--you're awfully good to me."