For six days the tailor-shop and the life at Chaudiere had been things almost apart from his consciousness.

Ever-recurring memories of Rosalie Evanturel were driven from his mind with a painful persistence.

In the shadows where his nature dwelt now he would not allow her good innocence and truth to enter.

His self-reproach was the more poignant because it was silent.
Watching the tempest-swept valley, the tortured forest, where wild life was in panic, there came upon him the old impulse to put his thoughts into words, "and so be rid of them," as he was wont to say in other days.

Taking from his pocket some slips of paper, he laid them on the table before him.