Rachel had thrown him over.  He had always known she would, and—­she had.

They were to have been married in a few weeks; three weeks and one day.  He marked a day off every morning when he waked.  He had thought of her as his wife till the thought had become part of himself.  Its roots were in his inmost being.  He tore it out now, and looked at it apart from himself, as a man bleeding and shuddering looks upon a dismembered limb.

The sweat broke from Hugh’s forehead.  The waiting and daily parting had seemed unbearable, that short waiting of a few weeks.  Now she would never be his.  That long, ever-growing hunger of the heart would never be appeased.  She had taken herself away, taking away with her her dear hands and her faithful eyes and the low voice, the very sound of which brought comfort and peace.  They were his hands and eyes.  She had given them to him.  And now she had wrenched them away again, those faithful eyes had seared him with their scorn, those white hands, against which he had leaned his forehead, had thrust him violently from her.  He could not live without her.  This was death, to be parted from her.

“I can’t, Rachel, I can’t,” said Hugh, over and over again.  What was any lesser death, compared to this, compared to her contempt?

She would never come back.  She despised him.  She would never love him any more.  He had told her that it must be a dream that she could love him, and that he should wake.  And she had said it was all quite true.  How sweetly she had said it.  But it was a dream, after all, and he had waked—­in torment.  Life as long as he lived would be like this moment.

“I will not bear it,” he said, suddenly, with the frantic instinct of escape which makes a man climb out of a burning house over a window-ledge.  Far down is the pavement, quiet, impassive, deadly.  But behind is the blast of the furnace.  Panic staggers between the two, and—­jumps.

“I will not bear it,” said Hugh, tears of anguish welling up into his eyes.

He had not only lost her, but he had lost himself.  That better, humble, earnest self had gone away with Rachel, and he was thrust back on the old false cowardly self whom, since she had loved him, he had abhorred.  He had disowned it.  He had cast it off.  Now it enveloped him again like a shirt of fire, and a voice within him said, “This is the real you.  You deceived yourself for a moment.  But this is the real you—­the liar, the coward, the traitor, who will live with you again forever.”

“I am forsaken,” said Hugh.  He repeated the words over and over again.  “Forsaken!  Forsaken!” And he looked round for a way of escape.

Somewhere in the back of his mind a picture hung which he had seen once and never looked at again.  He turned and looked at it now, as a man turns and looks at a picture on the wall behind him.

He saw it again, the still upturned face of the little lake among its encircling trees, as he had seen it that day when he and Doll came suddenly upon it in the woods.  What had it to do with him?  He had escaped from it once. He understood now.