going to her to help her if he could, going to tell her that he, too, was changed—as she was changed.
His hands clenched suddenly. God, the misery, the hopelessness, the wreck and ruin that lay at his door! And amends—what amends could he make—it was too late for that! How clearly he saw now—when it was too late! Her life was a broken thing, robbed, stripped and despoiled for all the years to come. Their love had not been love—she had given it its name—"passion, vice, lust, sin, degradation and misery and shame." And then love had come to her, into her life, love as God had meant love to be, and she had learned what love was she had said—only that she might never know its fulness, only that it might bring her added bitterness and added sorrow! Thornton had asked her to marry him that night—and she had refused him—because the past, it must have been as a shuddering, hideous phantom that the past had risen before her, had left her no other thing to do but turn away. It seemed he could see her see—her bury her face in her hands and—
He stopped short in his walk. Was he changed so much as this! Did he care so much that it was her happiness—even with another—that counted most! Yes; it was true—he was changed indeed. And the change had brought him too, it seemed, to learn what love was—too late.
He went forward again—a little more slowly
