He could not help it, any more than he could calm the awful underswell of despair. He was far from feeling any presence of good in all this agony. No sense of a coming purification, as a result of the heat to which his soul was subjected. That his nature was giving way before the intense blast of the furnace, he may have known, but he had no thought of any separation of the little gold of good from the mass of evil. How could he ever again think of trying to do good? What a life of heavenly happiness he had just missed! He clung desperately to the sensuous picture his memory kept before him, reveling in the torture it generated. No thought of the future entered his mind, unless the form of poor little Milly, which now and again appeared to him, might be called a thought. From the outlines of her supple figure and haunting face he shrank with an inward shudder. Then suddenly, by some obscure cerebral operation, a glimpse, momentary but thrillingly sharp and clear, disclosed to him that other extreme of his situation. What a vast arc between the two confines of oscillation! Agnes Ransom, Milly White! Now, at last, he felt himself shriveling and wasting in the fire, as the blast from the tuyeres of God's furnace was doubled and trebled. He began to imagine how it all was to end, while some strange, thrilling whisper suggested the outlines of duty. Duty! what did he care for duty! Why should he, whose sweetest hopes had been dissipated by this breath of providence, have any care for the happiness of others? But his rebellion was weak. He arose, as the cars came crashing up to the station, and prepared himself for he knew not what. Almost any thing would be welcome. There seemed to be no place for him save the barren, dreary cabin in the mountains. As he realized this, once more his old arrogant nature flared up. "I will not go there," he thought, and his cheeks flushed. "I will not be the dupe of circumstance. I will go to the ends of the earth first." Nevertheless, he went aboard the train and took his seat in a car which was well filled with happy tourists returning to their Northern homes. The first person upon whom his eyes chanced to fall was Miss Crabb. She was busy with her note-book and pencil, her chin drawn down and her brow con tracted with intense thought. He shrank from her, as from something unbearable, and forthwith slipped away into another car. CHAPTER XX. AFTER ALL.