He came very near incapacity during the first day of the descent: for his vigil of the night before had cost him the use of both his arms and legs. Rose prayed him to be carried in her doolie, but he knew the effect the breakdown of his seemingly unassailable strength would have upon his men, and had himself tied upon the back of his little pony, and led, with no slackening for his infirmities, wherever his encouragement or his counsel was required. The perpetual jogging down-hill was, in his condition, not a bad imitation of martyrdom, which, in his heart he bore as deserved for having spent his strength upon a woman instead of for his men. But the power came back to his arms by the way, perhaps from sheer pain; and the use he found for them at the end of the day, when, though still in the snow, the weary little band gathered warm and happy about fires of fir, certainly suggested no regrets to the woman they enfolded. Her Reputation I The man who was sitting at the writing-table had not raised his head for half an hour from between his hands. When at last he lifted his face, after a third knock upon the door, the prints of his fingers were branded across its grayness in livid streaks. The hall-boy who entered, after waiting vainly for permission, handed him a telegram, which he opened and spread out on the desk before him. He stared at it blankly, with his temples upon his wrists, until the boy, tired of waiting, asked if there were any answer. Terence turned and looked at him as though unable to account for his presence. The boy repeated his question, and Terence shook his head, resting it again upon his hands as the door closed upon the messenger, gazing down uncomprehendingly upon the thin pink sheet. Presently, however, the meaning of what lay before him filtered into his consciousness. It was an invitation of no moment, but it needed a reply. He drew out a sheaf of forms from a pigeon-hole, wrote a refusal, rang for the boy, and sent it off. The incident passed at once from his mind, but it had disturbed his absorption. He rose and paced slowly and aimlessly about the room, gazing blindly out of the window and at the engravings upon the walls. There was something curious in the combined looseness and stiffness of his movements: he seemed literally to be dragging himself about. When he sat down again he turned his chair slightly from the table, and leaning back in it, stared out at the gray day with a look of dazed pain upon his face. So he remained while an hour went over; as still, as empty, as a deserted house. Then, with a deeper breath and the same confused slowness in his movements, he drew an envelope from his pocket, and spread out the sheet within it upon the desk. The lines it carried covered but a single page, and he had read them through a dozen times. They came from a woman whom he had loved more than his own soul, and they cast him, with freezing contempt, out of her sight for ever.