Through unused lanes, across dark, almost forgotten fields, frozen and bleak, he sped, his straining eyes bent upon the blackness ahead, fearfully searching for the first faint flicker in a certain window. He did not know how long it took him to cover the miles that lay between the village and the forlorn cottage in the winter-swept lane. He had carefully concealed his face from the station men and there were so few people abroad in that freezing night that no one knew of the return of Justine's long-absent husband. His journey across the fields was accomplished almost before he knew it had begun, so full was his mind of the purpose that brought him there. Every sound startled and unnerved him, yet he hurried on unswervingly. He was going to the end of it all. At last he came to the fence that separated Justine's little farm from the broad acres of David Strong. Scarce half a mile away stood the cottage, hidden in the night. He knew it was there, and he knew that a light shone from a window on the side of the house farthest from him. It was there that she loved to sit, and, as it was not yet ten o'clock, she could not have gone to bed. He swerved to the south, and by a wide detour came to the garden fence that he had built in the days gone by. As he slunk past the corner of the barn his gaze fell upon the lighted window. He clung to the fence and gazed intently at the square blotch of yellow in the blackness. She was there! In that room! His Justine! For a moment his resolution wavered. Then he doggedly turned his back upon the kindly glimmer in her window, and looked into the shadow. He did not dare look again upon the loving light that stretched its warmth out to him as he shuddered and cringed on the threshold of his own home, almost within the clasp of those adoring arms. But, with his back to her, his face to the darkness, he waited, waited, waited. It seemed to him that hours passed before he dared again to face the house, fearing that another glimpse of her light would break his resolution. His mind was a blank save for one tense thought--the one great thought that had drawn him from one woman to the other. He thought only of the moment when the light in the window should disappear, when stillness should be in Justine's bed-chamber, when no accusing eye could look upon what was to follow. His numb fingers felt for the knife that lay sheathed in his overcoat pocket, and he shuddered as they touched it.