He had come out of his school not half an hour before, rejoicing more than any schoolboy going to play in the glorious weather.  For him there was not too much light on the lovely autumn landscape; it was all a part of the peace that was within him and without, of the God he knew to be within him and without—­for, out of his struggle for righteousness in small things, he had come back into that light which most men cannot see or believe.  Just in so far as a man comes into that light he ceases to know himself as separate, but knows that he is a part of all men and all things, that his joy is the joy of all men, that their pain is his; therefore, as Trenholme desired the fulfilment of his own hopes, he desired that all hope in the world might find fruition.  And because this day he saw—­what is always true if we could but see it—­that joy is a thousandfold greater than pain, the glory of the autumn seemed to him like a psalm of praise, and he gave thanks for all men.

Thus Trenholme had walked across the fields, into these groves—­but now, as he sat by the river, all that, for the time, had passed away, except as some indistinct memory of it maddened him.  His heart was full of rage against his brother, rage too against the woman he loved; and with this rage warred most bitterly a self-loathing because he knew that his anger against them was unjust.  She did not know, she had no cause to know, that she had darkened his whole life; but—­what a fool she was!  What companionship could that thoughtless fellow give her?  How he would drag her down!  And he, too, could not know that he had better have killed his brother than done this thing.  But any woman would have done for Alec; for himself there was only this one—­only this one in the whole world.  He judged his brother; any girl with a pretty face and a good heart would have done for that boisterous fellow—­while for himself—­“Oh God,” he said, “it is hard.”

Thus accusing and excusing these lovers, excusing and again accusing himself for his rage against them, he descended slowly into the depth of his trouble—­for man, in his weakness, is so made that he can come at his worst suffering only by degrees.  Yet when he had made this descent, the hope he had cherished for months and years lay utterly overthrown; it could not have been more dead had it been a hundred years in dying.  He had not known before how dear it was, yet he had known that it was dearer than all else, except that other hope with which we do not compare our desires for earthly good because we think it may exist beside them and grow thereby.