Since then he had passed through a lifetime.

What had happened might well have covered the space of months--or of years.

He had met a woman, and like the warm sunshine she had become instantly a part of his soul, flooding him with those emotions which make life beautiful.
That he had told her of this love as calmly as if she had known of it slumbering within his breast for years seemed to him to be neither unreal nor remarkable.
He turned his face back to the tent, but there was no movement there.
He knew that there--alone--the girl was recovering from the tremendous strain under which she had been fighting.

He sat down, facing the lake.
For the first time his mental faculties began to adjust themselves and his blood to flow less heatedly through his veins.

For the first time, too, the magnitude of his promise--of what he had undertaken--began to impress itself upon him.