The nostalgia grew. The chimes of the cathedral lost their music, the stillness of the town became more unbearable than the turmoil and clatter of cities. There was something to be wrought for and fought for in the world outside. This was not life; this was a mausoleum!
The arguments with his father--his mother was dead--and the long time it took to persuade him.... The parting with Margaret, and the whispered vows and promises, spoken breathlessly from their earnest young hearts. It seemed they could never be broken.
He came to London. It was in the late seventies, at the beginning of the spread of education that has resulted in the amazing flood of periodicals: it was a flood that led Ferrol on to fortune. His scope widened; he grew in his outlook, and saw that here was a way to power indeed. He shone like a new star over London, gathering lesser lights around him, developing that marvellous power of organization, that astonishing personality that drew men to him, until he seized his opportunity and bought the moribund _Day_ when it was a penny paper on its last legs. In ten years' time he had become wealthy and powerful, and since then he had gone on and on until no triumph was denied him.
And Margaret...? The years passed, and with the passing of time, they both developed. That young love, once so irrefrangible, grew warped and misshapen, until it finally snapped. There was no quarrel; neither could reproach the other; they simply grew out of their love, as so many young people do. There was a correspondence for a time, but it slackened and presently ceased altogether. She must have felt her hold loosening on Ferrol, as with a thousand new interests he came upon the wide horizon of life. She must have noticed this in his letters, and instead of seeking to bind him to her against his will, she just let him go. And Ferrol must have weighed the impossibility of asking her to marry him at this point of his career, when he was striving and struggling upwards; not all men travel the fastest when they travel alone, but Ferrol was one of those who could run no risk of being delayed. They had none of the pang of parting ... but years afterwards, when Ferrol was a childless widower (for he married when he was thirty-five, and walked behind his wife's coffin two years afterwards), he wondered what had become of Margaret, and always he cherished that memory of his one romance that had tapered away out of his life. He could never forget the sweet simplicity of Margaret's face, the tears on her eyelashes, and the yielding softness of her youth when he pressed her to his heart and lips with wonderful thoughts quivering through his soul.