And standing there looking into her sweet eyes, which were now suffused with love, Amer felt that he could not leave her.
"You shall be my Radiant City," he cried, "I will live and work for you."
[CHAPTER III.]
THE KING'S MARK.
For some weeks Amer resolutely put away the thought of the Radiant City, and would not listen to the Voice. In fact the Voice seemed, when he heard it at all, to be very far away, and he began to wonder how it was that its sound had ever stirred his soul.
His new work, the thought that every day he was piling up money for the support of Gabrielle, together with the society of his old companions, filled his thoughts and his days, and if ever the remembrance of the step he had so nearly taken, intruded, he flung it aside.
But was it his fancy that his Mother's face now and then wore an expression almost of disappointment when she looked at him? Was it fancy that even Gabrielle did not treat him in exactly the same manner as formerly? She looked up to him as above her in the old days, falling in with his suggestions, and following, in a great measure, his advice. But it seemed now as if there was sometimes a tinge of scorn in her words, as if he had fallen from some pedestal upon which she had placed him.
During the day he was able to banish these thoughts and suspicions from his mind by the means of business or pleasure. But at night he would lie awake pondering over it, and at times a great loathing of himself took possession of him. He despised his want of decision. He had been weak, and had turned his back upon the enduring of hardships.
Moreover the thought of the business he had undertaken lay at times like a dead weight on his spirit.