Almost before he knew it he was in the open fields.
The idea of vengeance had never crossed his mind.

He was neither a physical nor a moral coward, but he had never felt the merely animal fury of disputed animal possession which the world has chosen to recognize as a proof of outraged sentiment, nor had North Liberty accepted the ethics that an exchange of shots equalized a transferred affection.

His love had been too pure and too real to be moved like the beasts of the field, to seek in one brutal passion compensation for another.

Killing--what was there to kill?
All that he had to live for had been already slain.

With the love that was in him--in them--already dead at his feet, what was it to him whether these two hollow lives moved on and passed him, or mingled their emptiness elsewhere?
Only let them henceforth keep out of his way! For in his first feverish flow of thought--the reaction to his benumbed will within and the beating sleet without--he believed Demorest as treacherous as his wife.