“She was perfectly right about my selfishness, though. What a brute I am! Oh, my truelove Christie! What I do make you put up with in one way and another!”

He stopped when he reached the pigsty; for there was the light in Gerda’s bedroom!

How different this homecoming was from all that he had expected! Well, that was the way things worked out! Instead of either of the great clear horns of Fate’s dilemma, a sort of blurred and woolly forehead of the wild goat Chance!

He had managed to keep his life-illusion. His precious “mythology” could live still. But at what expense?

“If you hadn’t seen that face, I should have known tonight what now I shall never know!” O fool⁠ ⁠… fool⁠ ⁠… fool!

He crossed the road with dragging steps and opened the little iron gate as quietly as he could.