she was sure, if it came only to punish them for the cruelty which
thwarted her timid anticipation of it by pressing on her natural instinct
at all costs to bargain for an escape from pain, and making her simulate
contentment to cheat her muffled wound and them.




CHAPTER XIII

His love meantime was the mission and the burden of Alvan, and he was not
ashamed to speak of it and plead for it; and the pleading was not done
troubadourishly, in soft flute-notes, as for easement of tuneful emotions
beseeching sympathy. He was liker to a sturdy beggar demanding his
crust, to support life, of corporations that can be talked into admitting
the rights of man; and he vollied close logical argumentation, on the
basis of the laws, in defence of his most natural hunger, thunder in his
breast and bright new heavenly morning alternating or clashing while the
electric wires and post smote him with evil tidings of Clotilde, and the
success of his efforts caught her back to him. Daily many times he
reached to her and lost her, had her in his arms and his arms withered
with emptiness. The ground he won quaked under him. All the evidence
opposed it, but he was in action, and his reason swore that he had her
fast. He had seen and felt his power over her; his reason told him by
what had been that it must be. Could he doubt? He battled for his
reason. Doubt was an extinguishing wave, and he clung to his book of the
Law, besieging Church and State with it, pointing to texts of the law
which proved her free to choose her lord and husband for herself,
expressing his passionate love by his precise interpretation of the law:
and still with the cold sentience gaining on him, against the current of