to his tears as to his batterings. It was not to be borne! In that wall of his own flesh and blood there was no relenting crevice through which he might creep and timidly touch hands with those he loved again. . . . He had wronged them, and there was only one way to make it right. . . . The old uncles—wondering all these years about their mother's money—and it had come to him! And Renny! But he could not think of Renny, and that look of shame for him on Renny's face!
All night it had been necessary to compel his mind from the remembrance of that look. There had been moments when he had felt that he must run down the attic stairs, throw himself on his knees at Renny's bedside, and beg him to forgive him, to comfort him, as he had comforted him after childish nightmares. Renny, whom he had wronged most of all! Well, now he was going to do what lay in his power to set things right. They would have to take the money now and divide it among them!
This morning it required no effort to keep his mind clear. It was as clear as crystal, exquisitely empty, as though washed clean by a hurricane. It was like an empty crystal bowl held up by the hands of his soul to receive the wine of beauty. From every side that wine ran into it, from the pine-sweet darkness of the ravine, from the reddening fields, along the slanting rays from the sun through which God spoke to him.
He passed the cross-roads. Here once they would have buried him, when his drenched body had been taken from the lake, with a stake driven through his heart. A warning to those who contemplated suicide. He did not think he would have minded that. He would have been no lonelier buried at the cross-roads than in the churchyard with his kin around him. What he was about to do seemed so natural that it seemed to him that all his acts for years had been leading up to this. To obliterate himself—to dash from his lips the bitter cup of living. He had brought with him into the world not much but the power of loving beauty. He would take out with him all that he could absorb of beauty, and perhaps God would
