This test was at hand. He reassured himself, as he had vainly
reassured himself before, by every resource his mind and courage could
muster, and still he was afraid. He saw nothing ahead but a black void
in which there was neither love nor companionship nor friendly hands
and faces, nothing but a deep gloom in which he should wander
alone,--not because he wished to, but because he must.
He turned with a sudden resolution, crossed the low rocky point and
went down to the flat. He passed under the trestle which carried the
chute. The path to the house turned sharply around a clump of alder.
He rounded these leafy trees and came upon Doris standing by a low
stump. She stood as she did the first time he saw her on the steamer,
in profile, only instead of the steamer rail her elbow rested on the
stump, and she stared, with her chin nestled in the palm of one hand,
at the gray, glacial stream instead of the uneasy heave of a winter
sea. And Hollister thought with a slow constriction gathering in his
breast that life was a thing of vain repetitions; he remembered so
vividly how he felt that day when he stood watching her by the rail,
thinking with a dull resentment that she would presently look at him
and turn away.
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