Mrs. Wade sat silently taking in each word, studying him with wet
eyes, her lips almost blue, her breath a little short. The fire
in his voice, the reality of his strange, terrible love, the eyes
that gazed so sadly and so unexpectantly into space, the hands
that seemed to have shed their weight of toil and clutched, too
late, for the bright flowers of happiness--all filled her with
compassion. Never had he looked so splendid. He seemed, in
casting off his thongs, to have taken on some of the Herculean
quality of his own magnificent gesture. It was as if their
barnyard well had burst into a mighty, high-shooting geyser. To
her dying day would she remember that surge of passion. To have
met it with anger would have been of as little avail as the stamp
of a protesting foot before the tremors of an earthquake.

She offered him the comforting directness which she might have
given Bill. "I didn't know you felt so deeply, Martin. Life plays
us all tricks; it's played many with me, and it's playing one of
its meanest with you, for whatever happens you are going to
suffer--far more than I am. You can believe it or not, but I'm
sorry."

Martin felt oddly grateful to her; he had not expected this sense
of understanding. She might have burst into wild tears. Instead,
she was pitying him. More possessed of his usual immobility, he
remarked:

"I must be a fool, a great, pathetic fool. I look into a girl's
eyes and immediately see visions. I say a few words to her and
she is kind enough to say a few to me and I see pictures of new
happiness. I should have more sense. I don't know what is the