CHAPTER XXIV
ON THE BRINK
ARE our lives mapped out for us, pre-ordained from the beginning, as most of us at times secretly believe—as many frankly aver to be their only creed? With Varge all things seemed to be set at naught, passed beyond control or effort of his, and it was as though fate plucked at his elbow and, when he turned, chuckled ironically in his face. He had done everything within his power, for her sake and his own, to escape from the consequences of this love that had come to him, and every step he had taken in the belief that it was leading them to lives utterly apart had, instead, been bringing them irrevocably nearer—until it had literally flung him from the sea upon the beach of this little fishing village on the coast of Maine, where, as though by the touch of some magician's hand, the image in his soul, embodied, full of glorious, throbbing, pulsing life, had risen up before him.
Was it a higher power than his, immutable of purpose, that had brought this to pass—was it meant that after all—but why dream, why torture himself like that? If temporarily a free man, the gulf between them was no less impassable than it had ever been; and even granting that it were, there still remained—herself. What thoughts of him, save those actuated by pity and her tender woman's sympathy, could ever have come to her? To care for him, to love him, to even think of him in
227
