Up in his little room, Peter began to carry out his sudden plan for leaving Shadyville. It was true that he had had an offer, more than once, from Brentwood. Brentwood had been a chum of his at college, a friend who had never ceased to remember and appreciate him. The offer was still open, and it solved Peter's problem. He had told Sheila that he would marry Charlotte or do something else that would answer as well. He found that something else in going away. He had not many possessions; shabby clothes--with an air to them; shabby books--that shone with their inner grace. The books took longest, and when he had finished packing them, it was dawn. He went to his window and watched the slow coming of the light, and in that silent, gray hour, he felt himself more alone than he had ever been. Everything seemed to have been stripped from him; this town where he had been born, and where generations of his family had been born before him; his friends; the little room, so dismantled now, that for years had been his home-place; all these--and his hope of happy love. He remembered how, in his early, romantic boyhood, he had hoped for that--for happy love; and now that hope was gone and everything was gone with it. Everything was gone because of Sheila; he had given up everything that she might be safe, that she might have peace--the peace, at least, of being unafraid. He thought of her now with a calm tenderness--as if, having given so much for her peace, he had somehow gained peace for himself, too. And then he thought of Charlotte, and it was for Charlotte, not for Sheila, that tears--a man's slow, difficult tears--forced themselves into his eyes. But Charlotte was strong. It was her strength that had roused strength in him; strength to leave the garden, to escape the insinuating, ensnaring sweetness of the night and go forth into the daylight world of men. And just then the first ray of sunlight touched his window sill, touched it and stole within the room. The day had come; and though he was forty-six years old and not born for fighting, a sudden elation seized upon Peter's sad heart--as if the finger of the sunlight had touched it, too. CHAPTER XVII Sheila had thought herself acquainted with loneliness in the days immediately following her grandmother's death--days when she had had the consolation and companionship of Peter's frequent visits; but after Peter left Shadyville, she knew loneliness indeed. Charlotte had taken flight to Paris soon after Peter's departure, and there remained in Sheila's small world not one to comprehend the depths of her, the real needs and desires and aspirations of her mind and spirit.