It shamed a wife and son; it blackened the doors of a home; it penalized a family.
Indeed he had been a bad man, and yet she could not reconcile it all with a wonderful something in him, a boldness, a sense of humour, an everlasting energy, an electric power.

She had never seen anyone vitalize everything round him as John Grier had done.

He threw things from him like an exasperated giant; he drew things to him like an Angel of the Covenant.

To him life was less a problem than an experiment, and this last act, this nameless repudiation of the laws of family life, was like the sign of a chemist's activity.

As she stood on the mountain-top her breath suddenly came fast, and she caught her bosom with angry hands.
"Carnac--poor Carnac!" she exclaimed.
What would the world say?
There were those, perhaps, who thought Carnac almost a ne'er-do-well, but they were of the commercial world where John Grier had been supreme.
At the same moment, Carnac in the garden of his old home beheld the river too and the great expanse of country, saw the grey light of evening on the distant hills, and listened to Fabian who condoled with him.