To-night the spectre of a great loneliness sat silently by his side! His heart was sore, his pride had been bitterly touched, the desire and the whole fabric of his life was in imminent and serious danger.
The man who had left him was an enemy and a prejudiced man, but Trent knew that he was honest.

He was the first human being to whom he had ever betrayed the solitary ambition of his life, and his scornful words seemed still to bite the air.

If--he was right! Why not?
Trent looked with keen, merciless eyes through his past, and saw never a thing there to make him glad.

He had started life a workman, with a few ambitions' all of a material nature--he had lived the life of a cold, scheming money-getter, absolutely selfish, negatively moral, doing little evil perhaps, but less good.

There was nothing in his life to make him worthy of a woman's love, most surely there was nothing which could ever make it possible that such a woman as Ernestine Wendermott should ever care for him.