"I love to hear you threaten," said Althea, with maddening smoothness. "I love to hear Thornton men so particular." "Thornton men take what they feel like taking." Victor, too, spoke smoothly, his head at an angle that gave him a look of inconceivable arrogance. With arrogance equal to his, and a self-control equal, Althea spoke: "Thornton women give what they feel like giving." Victor threw her hand from him with restrained violence. "Give what you like," he answered. "Just remember what I 've said, that's all. Tell him"-he nodded again toward the house-"to walk careful'." "I'll remember what you said a long time," answered Althea, and the sweetness of her tone was worse than any menace; but she spoke to Victor's retreating back. The They were so splendid in the nakedness. of their emotions that Andrew had lost the sense of his position as listener long before. It seemed to him that he was the spectator at a wonderfully acted dramaa spectator and an actor as well. hint of danger that the real menace of Victor's tone had carried gave his relation with Althea an added poignancy. This time he definitely put into words what he had known before, and this without any special coxcombry, and that was of course that Althea cared for him. Here the old woman joined Althea, and was saying: "What made you do it, Althea? What made you make him angry? You might have been kinder." Althea met her grandmother's reproachful gaze with one of clear-eyed assurance. "I wanted him to be angry. I wanted him to go away." She lifted her face and let her grandmother read it. It was as though in some mute language she told her eloquently: "This is so sweet to me, this moment, that I can't bear the shadow of an unhappy human soul. I can't mar this sweet perfection of life by any shadow, and for this I would throw out every one, however beloved to me." Suddenly the old woman, with a wide gesture, as though with her arms she flung open the gate of all her being to the girl before her, cried: "Oh, my dear! oh, my dear!" It was as though she had said: "I know, I understand. Hide yourself here a moment from this," and she folded the girl to her breast with a gesture of tenderness such as one sees usually only from mothers to their very little children. That evening the old woman sat on the hearth beside Andrew without entering into her usual caustic chatter. Two or three times she sighed deeply. "What's the matter?" Andrew asked her, with that real concern in his voice that made women praise his goodness of heart. He laid a kind hand on her shoulder. She looked at him narrowly, as though asking him if he would understand what she was going to tell him-that for his sake the house was divided against itself. "Victor displeased Althea, and she 's quarreled with him," she said. "They've always done everything together, and lately they 've been almost sweethearts, and I'd hoped-" She broke off, and to her brooding look, as though she asked him mutely what he had to give in the place of this old and tried affection, Andrew found only a few words of stereotyped comfort. Her simple words, "The Thorntons feel things very deeply," sounded on his ears like a warning bell set over one of the reefs of the spirit. Up to this time he had walked along the path of friendship with Althea, hand in hand, not caring what turn of the road they took. Now, since he had heard her talk with Victor, he wanted to see her inmost heart; he wanted to throw open the doors of speech to her. She was at once as expressive and inexpressive as a child. She had no words with which to clothe her thoughts. Only with a glance. of her eyes, with a gesture of her hands, could she express those things that stirred in her depths; nor did she know how other souls had expressed themselves. Andrew lay awake that night a long time thinking of her. It was a wonderful thing to contemplate the awakening of a human soul as untouched as hers. There was no greater adventure of the spirit that he could think of-an adventure, too, fraught with danger. A wrong step, and there would be destruction. Her words, "Thornton women give what they feel like giving," would have made a man of harder heart than Andrew swear to himself that she must not give too much; only a cad of the lowest type but would feel the need of protecting Althea from her own generosity. And if it was unthinkable that he would be a cad, on the other hand it was equally unthinkable that he would be a fool. Not for a moment could he contemplate proud and wild Althea as Mrs. Andrew Sears. That would mean an anticlimax beyond anticlimax, a masterpiece spoiled. He swore to himself that neither sentiment nor passion should enmesh him. He would hold only her spirit for a little time, then at the moment of high perfection he would go away. He knew that Althea might suffer for a while, but, then, he would share her suffering, and both of them would have had a perfect moment; both of them would have in life one flawless memory. And if Althea suffered, her pride would be unhurt, her life enriched; for in Andrew's creed all experience enriched life. So during the sweet summer days of his convalescence Andrew, with what seemed like great gentleness and tenderness, and what in reality was incomparable tact, opened the doors of speech to Althea. He sent for books, and they read together; and through the things she read with him day by day she was awakened to the knowledge of herself and her heart. Her awakening was so sweet, so very shy, so brimming with tenderness, so unaware, that a thousand times Andrew would have drawn her to his heart, but unflinchingly he followed the difficult path which he had marked out for himself the day when Althea had defied Victor with such magnificent scorn. He could see that she was trembling at her thoughts, but he had skill enough to keep her from giving voice to them. He refused to feed his vanity to this extent. Her eyes alone told him what was in her heart, the unconscious touch of her hand, the way she leaned toward him as she sat near him, the gladness of her eyes when she came upon him unexpectedly, her brooding look as she watched him, as she thought, unobserved. It was all as mute and eloquent as the woods, untouched by anything like an overt confession, and for a little while they lived in this golden, enchanted atmosphere. One day they went together past the little clearing into the woods. Althea read aloud. She read with a peculiar wondering emphasis, as though what she read so affected her that she could hardly believe that others had felt what she felt and had been able to put into words her almost wordless thoughts. She laid the book down on her lap, and looked out through the trees with eyes that sought the far-off horizon; then swiftly she turned to Andrew with a gesture and look of complete self-surrender. "Without you, what would I have had in life?" she said. Her voice was low, and vibrated with the depth of her emotion. Andrew had no answer for her. "There would have been nothing," she went on. "How empty the world without Andrew would seen!" she indicated with a gesture. "All the things that make life for me would have slept for ever and ever in my heart. It would have been like living in a world under the sea, where morning never came." Andrew struggled to say something, but no words came to him. If he spoke, it must be of the forbidden things that he had promised to deny himself, or else he must kill dead the beauty of the moment, and to kill such a moment would be like murder, like killing with one's hands some flashing, happy, living thing. So he said nothing, but let the silence crowd in on them. They sat looking at each other, and it seemed to Andrew that the world was full of the things which he would not let himself say, and that he was brushed with the wings of Althea's unspoken thoughts. So they sat for a few perfect moments. He felt that he was being borne along now on some incredibly sweet and swift-rushing stream, and that he was being carried along on the stream's sweet bosom as helplessly as a leaf, and he rejoiced in his helplessness. He was aware of a relinquishing of his own will under the influence of this greater force. What had happened to him was as irrepressible as the melting of winter into spring. The snow-fields of his heart had become living streams, and still he did not speak, and still he and Althea continued to look at each other, penetrated by the magic of the moment. Then into their magic walked Althea's father. He slouched toward them through the trees, indifferent, arrogant, walking as he had when Andrew had first seen him, like one of the lords of the earth. He looked at them with his enigmatic and equable gaze as he said: "Getting kinder cold toward evening." Andrew mumbled some banal answer. He felt the shock of one who had been soaring above the earth and had suddenly fallen from a great height. "Althea 's coming to be quite a reader," Thornton next said. "Mother was a great reader as a girl, she has always said." In some subtle way he dominated Andrew. At this difficult moment it was he who had the social graces and who was equal to the situation. Of the three it was Andrew alone who was embarrassed. Althea seemed hardly to have noticed her father's presence. She smiled at him, and then as though through the warmth of her smile she had done all that was expected of her, she dismissed him from her mind and sat quiet, her eyes fixed on the horizon. Her father's presence at this moment had caused her neither embarrassment nor irritation. It was as though she dumbly acknowledged his right to be there, and not only his right, but that his presence was part of the beautiful scheme of things. Now as he stood there talking in his abbreviated way, she rose to her feet, and without speaking to either of them slipped into the shadow of the wood. For a moment after her departure Thornton chattered with lazy affability to Andrew; then he allowed a silence to fall between them as different from the idle silences that happen in the middle of commonplace talk as the silence which had encompassed Andrew and Althea had been different from all other silences. He caught Andrew's eyes and held his gaze unswervingly. The weight of his regard, which was both fierce and calm, crushed Andrew. He prolonged the silence until it seemed like a hostile thing, and Andrew strove in vain to break through it. But he could find nothing to say to this dark, calm-browed, arrogant man who was so completely master of the situation. Andrew became aware that he would have to wait until Thornton spoke, and that when he spoke, what he said would be of weight. It was as if he had Althea's intensity and her gift of filling a silence with meaning. At last he spoke. His voice was even and indifferent. To an outsider his words might have had no significance beyond that of kindly inquiry. He said: "Your leg's getting along pretty well these days; must be 'most well." He paused, allowing Andrew time to guess his meaning. "It is 'most well," Andrew answered. He had pulled himself together. His selfcommand and suaveness equaled Thornton's. They measured each other. It was Andrew who was first to voice the thought that floated like some tangible thing in the air between them. "I shall be saying good-by to you very soon." Again there was a pause, and Thornton swished the bushes with a little stick he carried in his hand. "I'll be going down to the junction one of these days," he suggested politely and tentatively. "The sooner the better," Andrew agreed cheerfully. "To-morrow suit you?" Thornton's voice was as toneless and uninsistent as ever. "To-morrow, by all means," Andrew agreed. Suddenly his world called to him. "She laid the book down on her lap, and looked out through the trees with eyes that sought the far-off horizon" He felt as though he had been delivered from some dangerous enchantment, that the woods and solitude and Althea had all overwhelmed him, and now he grasped for his own life as a prisoner grasps for freedom. In the midst of his poignant feeling of deliverance, shame reddened his bronzed cheeks. It was he who should have broached the subject of his departure. He had been weighed and watched by this silent man who had treated him always with negligent kindness. Without fuss and without trouble, he had been put out at the right moment, he had been sent away. "Sure you 're all right?" John Thornton now asked. "Sure you 're now up to an eighteen-mile ride 'cross a bad road?" "Oh, I think so. I'm sure I am," Andrew hastened to assure him. "Don't do anything you 're not up to," his host warned him. He slouched off, indifferent and arrogant, then he turned. Suddenly he stopped, came back to Andrew. He fixed him with his smoldering gaze again without embarrassment. "Oh, you know that money-what you 've been giving mother for board; I don't want it." He took a roll of bills from his pocket. "Here it is," he said calmly. His eyes had not left Andrew. The hot blood boiled up in Andrew's face. "Oh, I say," he cried, "you 've got to take it!" "I can't take money from you," Thornton told him suavely. There was even the hint of a smile on his face as he said it. A stranger might have thought that he was making Andrew a compliment instead of giving him the ultimate judgment of the Thorntons. To Andrew's helpless, "Oh, I say!" he only put the money back on a log and sauntered off. Anger shook through Andrew-anger and a feeling of hopeless insult, of having been so degraded and so humiliated that he could never appear upright again either in his own eyes or in the eyes of other men; and so smoothly had this been accomplished, so without stirring the surface of life, that he was powerless. To insist would be to make Thornton state why no Thornton could accept money from him. This race of strong and lawless men had judged him by their own laws, and by their own laws they had found him not only wanting, but a human being from whom they could accept nothing. It was a social ostracism such as Andrew had never known, and while his anger burned him, the knowledge of what this race of men thought of him was horrible and disintegrating, a thing which stripped his self-respect from him as though it had been a garment, and left his naked soul stung with the doubt of himself. He sat as one frozen to stone. Only one thing in life seemed important, and that was to clothe his nakedness in his regained self-respect. The barrier to that was the little roll of money lying so innocently beside him. If he could not pay this debt, he would be spiritually bankrupt forever; and the only way to pay this was marriage with Althea. It struck him as a hideous reason for marrying anything as beautiful as she. If only the thought of marriage with her had once come to him, he could have faced it; if in that magical moment when he had seen her heart and she thought she had seen his he had desired to have her for his wife, this would have been easier. Then from behind him came a little sound that penetrated chill and terrible to Andrew's shaking heart: it was the stifled little cry of a hurt child, and Andrew knew that it was Althea, and that Althea had heard everything. As he arose to go to her, the thought came to Andrew, in a flash of insight, that, to her mind, their silence had in it all the elements of a silent betrothal; and there came to him another thought, grinning and malicious, and it was that he had intended to have a light leave-taking. She was crouched behind a tree crying silently with a grief more terrible than any he had witnessed, and he stood in the face of the tempest of her grief for once inadequate and gauche. He had meant to see if she would let him pay the price of his self-respect, and all at once he realized that that was forever impossible, that she had witnessed the judgment of the Thorntons, and that she found that judgment just, and with his insight into the hearts. of women he knew that this knowledge had been, in the fair garden of her life, like some corroding thing, and that where the flowers of her spirit had bloomed there was nothing but a withering black ness. He realized all this, for in all Andrew's conflicting emotions every horrid detail stood out as the detail of a landscape illuminated by sudden lightning. When he put his arm around Althea to raise her to her feet, the same hideous lucidity made him realize that this was the first time that he had been so close to her, made him realize the magnificence of her beauty. He pleaded with her: |