But for youth, the glorious youth of Roger and Nada, it would seem very short when in later years they looked back upon it.

And for a time as he contemplated the long span of life that lay behind him, and the briefness of that which lay ahead, a yearning selfishness possessed the soul of Father John, an almost savage desire to hold those five years away from the violation of the law--not alone for Nada's sake and Roger McKay's--but for his own.

In this twilight of a tragic life a great happiness had come to him in the love of these two, and thought of its menace, its desecration by a pitiless and mistaken justice, roused in him something that was more like the soul of a fighting man than the spirit of a missioner of God.
Vainly he tried to stamp out the evil of this resentment, for evil he believed it to be.

And shame possessed him when he saw the sweet glory in Nada's face later that morning, and the happiness that was in Roger McKay's.

Yet was that aching place in his heart, and the hidden fear which he could not vanquish.
And that day, it seemed to him, his lips gave voice to lies.