When he was safely out of reach he turned his course and hurried away in the direction of the Tower of Buccione. It was a place he had discovered once in his walks with Edith, behind the ruins of an old fortress castle, a high square tower surrounded by panelled walls now in ruins and overrun by climbing plants. It stood at the far end of the Lake of Orta, on a hill covered with chestnut trees, and commanding a wide view from south to north. You could see as far as Novare, that shining city at the other end of the plain, and Monte Rosa, whose distant summit and glaciers scintillating in the sun looked round on all the other mountain levels. From no part roundabout was there a wider view than from this deserted place. Often when his companion’s fatigue left him with empty hours to fill Maurice would come here to gaze toward home and sense his exile to the full. He stayed there now a long time, letting his wounds rankle. Why should he now in this hour be feeling only misery from his love, that passion that should have been the crown of all his youth? Was there, then, something besides love, something so considerable that even if it could not destroy love it was strong enough to reduce it to a second place in life and spoil its pleasures? Love was not all of life. It could not even isolate itself, or detach itself from the rest of life. Of itself it was only a disorganised and destructive force. On the other side of those mountains that marked the horizon there his love had certainly wrought disaster. Maurice was sure of that now. Could he honestly say that only circumstances were to blame? No, his past, when he summoned it back frankly, condemned only him. The evidence showed that he himself had been guilty of lightness and feebleness, culpable in having consented to go away with Edith at all, when he could easily have foreseen that their resources would not hold out; himself to blame for having accepted without proofs the explanations which Edith made him, when it should have been easy for him to see her inconsistencies; responsible for having yielded to the influence of her caresses in the present without binding that present to either past or future; responsible for having yielded to her when she insisted upon a year of forgetfulness from him, a year of happiness, a year of indolence and cowardice. And it came to him distinctly that if it was a question of his honour, there could be no salvation unless it reached him through his family. Without his family, he knew that he was lost. He could not, perhaps for a long time, make good that money of Edith’s which he had used and was not willing to have lived on; but with his family, if he asked their help, he might be saved. How could they refuse to save him? Were they not all one with him in his shame? But if they were one with him in shame, he had also duties toward them, and had neglected them.