et with in a
pupil before. She hated difficult things, and yet she could never pass
one by. They seemed to challenge her; she had no peace until she
mastered them. She had the power to make a great effort, to lift a
weight heavier than herself. Wunsch hoped he would always remember her
as she stood by the track, looking up at him; her broad eager face, so
fair in color, with its high cheek-bones, yellow eyebrows and
greenishhazel eyes. It was a face full of light and energy, of the
unquestioning hopefulness of first youth. Yes, she was like a flower
full of sun, but not the soft German flowers of his childhood. He had it
now, the comparison he had absently reached for before: she was like the
yellow prickly pear blossoms that open there in the desert; thornier and
sturdier than the maiden flowers he remembered; not so sweet, but
wonderful.

That night Mrs. Kohler brushed away many a tear as she got supper and
set the table for two. When they sat down, Fritz was more silent than
usual. People who have lived long together need a third at table: they
know each other's thoughts so well that they have nothing left to say.
Mrs. Kohler stirred and stirred her coffee and clattered the spoon, but
she had no heart for her supper. She felt, for the first time in years,
that she was tired of her own cooking. She looked across the glass lamp
at her husband and asked him if the butcher liked his new overcoat, and
whether he had got the shoulders right in a ready-made suit he was
patching over for Ray Kennedy. After supper Fritz offered to wipe the
dishes for her, but she told him to go about his business, and not to
act as if she were sick or getting helpless.

When her work in the kitchen was all done, she went out to cover the
oleanders against frost, and to take a last look at her chickens. As she
came back from the hen-house she stopped by one of the linden trees and
stood resting her hand on the trunk. He would never come back, the poor
man; she knew that. He would drift on from new town to new town, from
catastrophe to catastrophe. He would hardly find a good home for himself
again. He would die at last in some rough place, and be buried in the
desert or on the wild prairie, far enough from any linden tree!

Fritz, smoking his pipe on the kitchen doorstep, watched his Paulina and
guessed her thoughts. He, too, was sorry to lose his friend. But Fritz
was getting old; he had lived a long while and had learned to lose
without