All the afternoon he walked along the bluff road, studiously avoiding Saunders who had seemed desirous of accompanying him, for Mark wanted to be alone.  Taking no note of the distance, he walked on for miles.  It was already late in the afternoon when he turned to go back, yet he had not thought out any solution to his own problem, nor how to approach Father Murray in behalf of the Bishop.

To Mark Griffin pain of any kind was something new.  He had escaped it chiefly by reason of his clean, healthful life, and through a fear that made him take every precaution against it.  He did not remember ever having had even a headache before; and, as to the awful pain in his heart, there never had been a reason for its existence till this moment.

With all the ardor of a strong nature that has found the hidden spring of human love, Mark Griffin loved Ruth Atheson.  She had come into his life as the realization of an ideal which since boyhood, so he thought, had been forming in his heart.  In one instant she had given that ideal a reality.  For her sake he had forgotten obstacles, had resolved to overcome them or smash them; but now the greatest of them all insisted on raising itself between them.  Poor, he could still have married her; rich, it would have been still easier so far as his people were concerned; but as a grand duchess she was neither rich nor poor.  The blood royal was a bar that Mark knew he could not cross except with ruin to both; nor was he foolish enough to think that he would be permitted to cross it even did he so will.  Secret agents would take care of that.  There was no spot on earth that could hide this runaway girl longer than her royal father desired.  Mark Griffin would have blessed the news that Ruth Atheson was really only the daughter of a beggar, or anything but what he now believed her to be.

Then there was the man Saunders had spoken of, but Mark thought little of him.  Whatever he had been to the girl once, Mark felt that the officer was out of her life now and that she no longer cared for him.

It was dusk when the weary man reached that part of the bluff road where the giant tree stood.  Tired of body, and with aching heart, he flung himself into the tall grass wherein he had lain on the day he first saw her.  Lying there, bitter memories and still more bitter regrets overmastered him as he thought of the weeks just past.

The gray ocean seemed trying—–­and the thought consoled him a little—­to call him back home; but the great tree whispered to him to remain.  Then Father Murray’s face seemed to rise up, pleading for his sympathy and help.  It was strange what a corner the man had made for himself in Mark’s heart; and Mark knew that the priest loved him even as he, Mark, loved the priest; but he felt that he must go away, must flee from the misery he dared not face.  Mark was big and strong; but he cried at last, just as he had cried in boyhood when his stronger brother had hurt his feelings, or his father had inflicted some disappointment upon him; and a strong man’s tears are not to be derided.