rrying it on alone; Arthur's tongue was
paralyzed in his father's presence by his being unable for an instant to
forget there what had occurred between them. So Del had borne practically
the whole burden of filling the dreary, dragging hours for him--who could
not speak, could not even show whether he understood or not. He had never
been easy to talk to; now, when she could not tell but that what she said
jarred upon a sick and inflamed soul, aggravating his torture by
reminding him of things he longed to know yet could not inquire about,
tantalizing him with suggestions--She dared not let her thoughts go far
in that direction; it would soon have been impossible to send him any
message beyond despairing looks.

Sometimes she kissed him. She knew he was separated from her as by a
heavy, grated prison door, and was unable to feel the electric thrill
of touch; yet she thought he must get some joy out of the sight of
the dumb show of caress. Again, she would give up trying to look
cheerful, and would weep--and let him see her weep, having an instinct
that he understood what a relief tears were to her, and that she let
him see them to make him feel her loving sympathy. Again, she would be
so wrought upon by the steady agony of those fixed eyes that she would
leave him abruptly to hide herself and shudder, tearless, at the utter
misery and hopelessness of it all. She wondered at her mother's calm
until she noticed, after a few weeks, how the face was withering with
that shriveling which comes from within when a living thing is dying
at the core.

She read the Bible to him, selecting consolatory passage with the aid of
a concordance, in the evenings after he had been lifted into bed for the
night. She was filled with protest as she read; for it seemed to her that
this good man, her best of fathers, thus savagely and causelessly
stricken, was proof before her eyes that the sentences executed against
men were not divine, but the devilish emanations of brute chance. "There
may be a devil," she said to herself, frightened at her own blasphemy,
"but there certainly is no God." Again, the Bible's promises, so
confident, so lofty, so marvelously responsive to the longings and
cravings of every kind of desolation and woe, had a soothing effect upon
her; and they helped to put her in the frame of mind to find for
conversation--or, rather, for her monologues to him--subjects which her
instinct told her would be welcome visitors in that