Donaldson retired to his room, and without undressing threw up his window and stared at the hedge and the dark that lay beyond. Then he tried to work out some solution to the problem which confronted him. There was no use for him to try to blind himself to the fact that he loved this girl--that was but to shirk the question. She stood out as the supreme passion of his life and forced upon him a future that had a meaning beyond anything of which he had ever dreamed. She quickened in him new hopes, new aspirations, new ambitions. She made him see the triviality of all that he had most hoped to enjoy during this week; she opened his eyes to all that he had tried to make Arsdale see. With her by his side every day would be like that first afternoon; every hour thrilling with opportunities. The barren future which he had so feared, even though it offered no greater opportunities than had always lain before him, would tingle with possibilities. Wait? He could wait an eternity with her by his side and every waiting minute would be a golden minute. He could go back to that little office now and find a thousand things to do. He could hew out a career that would honor her. He saw numberless chances for reform work into which he could throw himself, heart and soul, while waiting. But there would be no waiting; life would begin from the first hour. What more did he need than her? He shuddered back from his luxurious room at the hotel as from something cheap. A loaf of bread without even so much as a jug of wine would be paradise enow. Just the opportunity to live and breathe and have his being in this big pregnant universe was all he craved. He needed nothing else. So the universe would be his. He dared not try to read her thoughts. He had no right to do this. It did n't matter. Her love was not essential. If he deserved it, that would come. It was enough that she had given him back his dreams, that she had taken him back to those fragrant days when his uncrusted soul had known without knowing. It was enough that the sweetness of her had become an inseparable part of him for evermore. She was his now, even though he should never again lay eyes upon her. The only relief he had was in the thought that she had accomplished this without committing herself. At least he did not have the burden of her tender love upon his soul further to complicate matters. So much he admitted frankly; so much was fact. The problem which now confronted him was how he could best escape from involving her at all in the inevitable climax--how he could make his escape without destroying in her the ideals with which she had surrounded him and which she had a right to keep. He owed this to her, to Arsdale, and to the world of men.