“I reckon he wasn’t; I know he wasn’t!”
Then, like a flash, Truedale believed he understood what had happened. This simple girl meant more to him than anything else—more than the past and what it held! A baser man would not have been greatly disturbed by this knowledge; a man with more experience and background would have understood it and known that it was a phase that must be dealt with sternly and uncompromisingly, but that it was merely a phase and as such bound to pass. Not so Truedale. He was stirred to the roots of his being; every experience was to him a concrete fact and, consequently, momentous. In order to keep pure the emotions that overpowered him at times, he must renounce all that separated him from Nella-Rose and reconstruct his life; or—he must let her go!
Once Truedale began to reason this out, once he saw Nella-Rose’s dependence upon him—her trust and happiness—he capitulated and permitted his imagination to picture and colour the time on ahead. He refused to turn a backward glance.
Of course all this was not achieved without struggle and foreboding; but he saw no way to hold what once was dear, without dishonour to that which now was dearer; and he—let go!
This determined, he strenuously began to prepare himself for the change. Day by day he watched Nella-Rose with new and far-seeing interest—not always with love and passion-blinded eyes. He felt that she could, with his devotion and training, develop into a rarely sweet and fine woman. He was not always a fool in his madness; at times he was wonderfully clear-sighted. He meant to return home, when once his health was restored, and take the Kendalls into his confidence; but the thought of Lynda gave him a bad moment now and then. He could not easily depose her from the most sacred memories of his life, but gradually he grew to believe that her relations to him were—had always been—platonic; and that she, in the new scheme, would play no small part in his life and Nella-Rose’s.
There would be years of self-denial and labour and then, by and by, success would be achieved. He would take his finished work, and in this he included Nella-Rose, back to his old haunts and prove his wisdom and good fortune. In short, Truedale was love-mad—ready to fling everything to the ruthless winds of passion. He blindly called things by wrong names and steered straight for the rocks.
He meant well, as God knew; indeed all the religious elements, hitherto unsuspected in him, came to the fore now. Conventions were absurd when applied to present conditions, but, once having accepted the inevitable, the way was divinely radiant. He meant to pay the price for what he yearned after. He had no other intention.
Now that he was resigned to letting the past go, he could afford to revel in the joys of the present with a glad sense of responsibility for the future.
Presently his course seemed so natural that he wondered he had ever questioned it. More and more men with a vision—and Truedale devoutly believed he had the vision—were recognizing the absurdity of old ideals.
Back to the soil meant more than the physical; it meant back to the primitive, the simple, the real. The artificial exactions of society must be spurned if a new and higher morality were to be established.