religion and philosophy to a satisfactory working basis by fusing in himself the physical and spiritual elements until the whole was a sound leaven. This was somewhat true, and because of it Tempest suffered rather more than an ordinary man might do. For he could not blindly blame the universe and his God and the other man, and so exculpate himself. Like one of an earlier day he had set out to build a tower to Heaven and had digged a pit for his own feet instead. He had betrayed his work even as Dick had betrayed him, and he dared not call Dick the most guilty.
Beside him on the desk lay an unfinished report. It should have gone down with to-day's mail, even as those other papers should have gone. On the floor under the window were an unopened pile of official envelopes and three text-books with the pages uncut. Down at Pitcher Portage Randal was waiting to see him in regard to some trouble with the breeds there. He had been waiting more than a month. These were a handful of things only. Tempest knew the multitude that bore witness against him.
Very still he sat, and faced the array of them as they trod past him through the night. And faced also the merciless, never-ending problem of life. Why should duty and desire clash for ever? Why should spirit and flesh be constantly at war? Why should a man's knowledge of his own sin not render him more merciful towards the sins of others? Tempest knew well the need for fight in the human soul. He knew that stagnation is a bitterer, because a more final, thing than the beating out of a heart in foam upon the rocks. But he knew also that a man's duty lies neither on the rocks nor in the backwater, but down the steady, strenuous, sanely direct stream of Life.
Tempest had dropped into a backwater to please himself with his private loves and desires. And now he was on the rocks. He knew it, and because the pain in him would not let him be he stayed there, bruising his spirit and beating it with rods. For he could not forgive Dick; he could not let Andree go, and he could not take up his life again. And he understood that, as a man, as an immortal soul, as the one firm human link between Time and Eternity, he must do all three.
