"If I go back to wish her good-by, she will keep out of my way, and part with me at the last moment like a stranger.

After my experience of women, to be in love again--in love with a girl who is young enough to be my daughter--what a fool, what a driveling, degraded fool I must be!" Hot tears rose in his eyes.

He dashed them away savagely, and went on again faster than ever--resolved to pack up at once at his lodgings in the village, and to take his departure by the next train.
At the point where the footpath led into the road, he came to a standstill for the second time.
The cause was once more a person of the sex associated in his mind with a bitter sense of injury.

On this occasion the person was only a miserable little child, crying over the fragments of a broken jug.
Alban Morris looked at her with his grimly humorous smile.

"So you've broken a jug ?" he remarked.
"And spilt father's beer," the child answered.