Let the laws of Nature work--eyeless and heartless as the whirlwind; he would live his life, be himself, be Nature, and depart without a murmur.

No scratch on the face of time, insignificant even as the pressure of a fern-leaf upon coal, should tell that he had ever thought his fate hard.

He would do his endeavor and die and return to nothing--not then more dumb of complaint than now.

Such had been for years his stern philosophy, and why should it now trouble him that a woman thought differently?
Did the sound of faith from such lips, the look of hope in such eyes, stir any thing out of sight in his heart?
Was it for a moment as if the corner of a veil were lifted, the lower edge of a mist, and he saw something fair beyond?
Came there a little glow and flutter out of the old time?
"All forget," he said to himself.

"I too have forgotten.