Conflict was in my blood, and always I had fought blithely.

But never with sweat like this on my forehead! Never with fear catching at my heart! Never with the agony of self-reproach assailing me! Now, to-night, I was meeting the strongest antagonist of all my life, the only one I had ever feared.
It was none other than I myself, that other John Cowles, young man, and now loose in the vast, free, garden of living.
Yet I fought with myself.

I tried to banish her face from my heart--with all my might, and all my conscience, and all my remaining principles, I did try.

I called up to mind my promises, my duties, my honor.

But none of these would put her face away.