He had made his choice,--a straight, hard path upwards; he was deaf now and forever to any word of kindness or pity.

As for this woman beside him, he would be just to her, in justice to himself: she never should know the loathing in his heart: just to her as to all living creatures.

Some little, mean doubt kept up a sullen whisper of bought and sold,--sold,--but he laughed it down.

He sat there with his head steadily turned towards her: a kingly face, she called it, and she was right,--it was a kingly face: with the same shallow, fixed smile on his mouth,--no weary cry went up to God that day so terrible in its pathos, I think: with the same dull consciousness that this was the trial night of his life,--that with the homely figure on the road-side he had turned his back on love and kindly happiness and warmth, on all that was weak and useless in the world.

He had made his choice; he would abide by it,--he would abide by it.