THE STOREKEEPER It was now late afternoon, the sun's rays coming slantingly into the forest, and the warmth of the day past and gone.

To Haward, riding at a gallop down the road that was scarce more than a bridle path, the rush of the cool air was grateful; the sharp striking of protruding twigs, the violent brushing aside of hanging vines, not unwelcome.
It was of the man that the uppermost feeling in his mind was one of disgust at his late infelicity of speech, and at the blindness which had prompted it.

That he had not divined, that he had been so dull as to assume that as he felt, or did not feel, so must she, annoyed him like the jar of rude noises or like sand blowing into face and eyes.

It was of him, too, that the annoyance was purely with himself; for her, when at last he came to think of her, he found only the old, placid affection, as far removed from love as from hate.

If he knew himself, it would always be as far removed from love as from hate.
All the days of her youth he had come and gone, a welcome guest at her father's house in London.