He went even back to her maidenhood: how did he know this was not the legitimate sequence of other secret schoolgirl escapades.

The bitter worldly light that had been forced upon his simple ingenuous nature had dazzled and blinded him.

He passed from fatuous credulity to equally fatuous distrust.
He stopped suddenly with the roaring of water before him.

In the furious following of his rapid thought through storm and darkness he had come, he knew not how, upon the bank of the swollen river, whose endangered bridge Demorest had turned from that evening.

A few steps more and he would have fallen into it.