"I thought" (he gave a laugh as if he were ashamed) "I'd turn over a new leaf this year, and do something that's more worth doing.

I was well enough off here so far as looking out for myself was concerned." Turrif looked at him with kind and serious disapproval.
"And when will you begin to live se life of a _man_ ?" "How do you mean--'a man' ?" "When will you make money and get married ?" "Do you think time is all wasted when one isn't making money and getting married ?" "For a _boy_, no; for a _man_, yes." Trenholme rose.

"Good-bye, and thank you for all your hospitality," said he.

"I'll come back in spring and tell you what I'm going to do next." He was moving out, when he looked again at the little shrine in the middle of the wall, the picture of the Virgin, and, below, the little altar shelf, with its hideous paper roses.

He looked back as it caught his eye, arrested, surprised, by a difference of feeling in him towards it.
Noticing the direction of Trenholme's glance, the Frenchman crossed himself.
It was a day of such glory as is only seen amid Northern snowfields.
Alec Trenholme looked up into the sky, and the blue of other skies that he remembered faded beside it, as the blue of violets fades beside the blue of gentian flowers.