He felt that he could have forgiven it--and himself--if he had been swept into the vortex of a headlong mountain torrent leaping down its own wild water-way, carrying all before it.
Other men he had seen who had been wrested off their feet, swept out of their own keeping by such a torrent on the steep hill-side of their youth.

But it had not been so with him.

He had walked more cautiously than they.

As he walked he had stopped to look at the little thread of water which came bubbling up out of its white pebbles.

It was so pretty, it was so feeble, it was so clear.