This very quality of resolute daring saved him from disaster.
Impulse quickened his footsteps now.

It quickened them to a run when the hand was dropped from the girl's forehead, and he saw again the face whose image and influence had banished sleep from his eyes the night before.
"Guida!" broke from his lips.
The man was transfigured.

Brightness leaped into his look, and the greyness of his moody eye became as blue as the sea.

The professional straightness of his figure relaxed into the elastic grace of an athlete.
He was a pipe to be played on: an actor with the ambitious brain of a diplomatist; as weak as water, and as strong as steel; soft-hearted to foolishness or unyielding at will.
Now, if the devil had sent a wise imp to have watch and ward of this man and this maid, and report to him upon the meeting of their ways, the moment Philip took Guida's hand, and her eyes met his, monsieur the reporter of Hades might have clapped-to his book and gone back to his dark master with the message and the record: "The hour of Destiny is struck." When the tide of life beats high in two mortals, and they meet in the moment of its apogee, when all the nature is sweeping on without command, guilelessly, yet thoughtlessly, the mere lilt of existence lulling to sleep wisdom and tried experience--speculation points all one way.

Many indeed have been caught away by such a conjunction of tides, and they mostly pay the price.
But paying is part of the game of life: it is the joy of buying that we crave.