"I wouldn't make too much of his innocence. He is all right so far as we
know; he's got precious little excuse for not being: but there is no such
gulf between any two young humans; there can't be, especially when one is a
man. Take my hand. There's a step there."

Two shapes in white, with shadows preposterously lengthening, went down the
hill. The long, dark house was open now to the night.

* * * * *

There is no night in the "stilly" sense at a mine.

The mill glared through all its windows from the gulch. Sentinel lights
kept watch on top. The hundred stamps pounded on. If they ceased a moment,
there followed the sob of the pump, or the clang of a truck-load of drills
dumped on the floor of the hoisting-works, or the thunder of rock in the
iron-bound ore-bins. All was silence on the hill; but a wakeful figure
wrapped in white went up and down the empty porches, light as a dead leaf
on the wind. It was the mother, wasting her night in grievous thinking,
sighing with weariness, pining for sleep, dreading the day. How should they
presume to tell that woman's story, knowing her only through one morbid
chapter of her earliest youth, which they had stumbled upon without the key
to it, or any knowledge of its sequel? She longed to feel that they might
be merciful and not tell it. She coveted happiness for her son, and in her
heart was prepared for almost any surrender that would purchase it for him.
If the lure were not so great! If the woman were not so blinding fair, why,
then one might find a virtue in excusing her, in condoning her silence,
even. But, clothed in that power, to have pretended innocence as well!