He was not the same man, now; he never again would be.

Pity and propinquity and the great law had done their work! For the first and only time in all his life Sim Gage was in love! Love dareth and endureth all things, magnifies and lessens, softens and hardens, loosens and binds, establishes for itself new worlds, fabricates for itself new values, chastens, humbles, makes weak, makes strong.

Sim Gage never before had known how merciless, how cruel all this may be.

He was in love.

With all his heart and life and soul he loved _her_, right or wrong.