That thought was a comfort to the distraught man. In the evening when
he went out to walk the sense of distance that lay all about him did
not tempt him to walk and walk, going half insanely forward for hours,
trying to break through an intangible wall.

He thought about Mary Cochran. She was a girl from a country town. She
must be like millions of American girls. He wondered what went on in
her mind as she sat in his class-room, as she walked beside him along
the streets of Union Valley, as she played with the children in the
yard beside his house.

In the winter, when in the growing darkness of a late afternoon Mary
and the children built a snow man in the yard, he went upstairs and
stood in the darkness to look out a window. The tall straight figure of
the girl, dimly seen, moved quickly about. "Well, nothing has happened
to her. She may be anything or nothing. Her figure is like a young tree
that has not borne fruit," he thought. He went away to his own room and
sat for a long time in the darkness. That night when he left the house
for his evening's walk he did not stay long but hurried home and went
to his own room. He locked the door. Unconsciously he did not want
Winifred to come to the door and disturb his thoughts. Sometimes she
did that.

All the time she read novels. She read the novels of Robert Louis
Stevenson. When she had read them all she began again.

Sometimes she came upstairs and stood talking by his door. She told
some tale, repeated some wise saying that had fallen unexpectedly from
the lips of the children. Occasionally she came into the room and
turned out the light. There was a couch by a window. She went to sit on