s to
how much I can be in love with you. I keep going." He did not lift his
eyes from her fingers, which he continued to study with the same fervor.
"Every kind of stringed instrument there is plays in your hands, Thea,"
he whispered, pressing them to his face.

She dropped beside him and slipped into his arms, shutting her eyes and
lifting her cheek to his. "Tell me one thing," Fred whispered. "You said
that night on the boat, when I first told you, that if you could you
would crush it all up in your hands and throw it into the sea. Would
you, all those weeks?"

She shook her head.

"Answer me, would you?"

"No, I was angry then. I'm not now. I'd never give them up. Don't make
me pay too much." In that embrace they lived over again all the others.
When Thea drew away from him, she dropped her face in her hands. "You
are good to me," she breathed, "you are!"

Rising to his feet, he put his hands under her elbows and lifted her
gently. He drew her toward the door with him. "Get all you can. Be
generous with yourself. Don't stop short of splendid things. I want them
for you more than I want anything else, more than I want one splendid
thing for myself. I can't help feeling that you'll gain, somehow, by my
losing so much. That you'll gain the very thing I lose. Take care of
her, as Harsanyi said. She's wonderful!" He kissed her and went out of
the door without looking back, just as if he were coming again
to-morrow.

Thea went quickly into her bedroom. She brought out an armful of muslin
things, knelt down, and began to lay them in the trays. Suddenly she
stopped, dropped forward and leaned against the open trunk, her head on
her arms. The tears fell down on the dark old carpet. It came over her
how many people must have said good-bye and been unhappy in that room.
Other people, before her time, had hired this room to cry in. Strange
rooms and strange streets and faces, how sick at heart they made one!
Why was she going so far, when what she wanted was some familiar place
to hide in?--the rock house, her little room in Moonstone, her own bed.
Oh, how good it would be to lie down in that little bed, to cut the
nerve that kept one struggling, that pulled one on and on, to sink into
peace there, with all the family safe and happy downstairs. After all,
she was a Moonstone girl, one of the preacher's children. Everything
else was in Fred's imagination. Why was she called upon to take such
chances? Any safe, humdrum wor