CHAPTER TEN. EMOTIONS ARE TRICKY THINGS

A man's mind is a tricky thing--or, speaking more exactly, a
man's emotions are tricky things. Love has come rushing to the
beck of a tip-tilted chin, or the tone of a voice, or the droop
of an eyelid. It has fled for cause as slight. Sometimes it runs
before resentment for a real or fancied wrong, but then, if you
have observed it closely, you will see that quite frequently,
when anger grows slow of foot, or dies of slow starvation, love
steals back, all unsuspected and unbidden--and mayhap causes
much distress by his return. It is like a sudden resurrection of
all the loved, long-mourned dead that sleep so serenely in their
tended plots. Loved though they were and long mourned, think of
the consternation if they all came trooping back to take their
old places in life! The old places that have been filled, most of
them, by others who are loved as dearly, who would be mourned if
they were taken away.

Psychologists will tell us all about the subconscious mind, the
hidden loves and hates and longings which we believe are dead and
long forgotten. When one of those emotions suddenly comes alive
and stands, terribly real and intrusive, between our souls and
our everyday lives, the strongest and the best of us may stumble
and grope blindly after content, or reparation, or forgetfulness,
or whatever seems most likely to give relief.

I am apologizing now for Bud, who had spent a good many months
in pushing all thoughts of Marie out of his mind, all hunger for
her out of his heart. He had kept away from towns, from women,