for souls. Perhaps religions are----Again I
don't know. I have found nothing secure--only a whirlpool into which I
will not drag others."

"I will drag you out," he asserted.

She smiled at him, in a momentary tenderness, and continued: "When I
was young I never doubted that I would conquer life. I pictured myself
rising in triumph over circumstance, as a gull leaves the sea.... When
I was young.... If I was afraid of the dark then I thought, of course,
I would outgrow it; but it has grown deeper than my courage. The night
is terrible now." A shiver passed over her.

"You are ill," he insisted, "but you shall be cured."

"Perhaps, a year ago, something might have been done, with assistance;
yes--with you. Then, whatever is, hadn't materialized. Why did you
delay?" she cried in a sudden suffering.

"You'll go with me tonight," he declared stoutly.

"In this?" She indicated the wind beating with the blows of a great
fist against the swaying sides of the demolished store. "Have you seen
the sea? Do you remember what happened on the day I went with you when
it was so beautiful and still?"

John Woolfolk realized, wakened to a renewed mental clearness by
the threatening of all that he desired, that--as Millie had
intimated--life was too complicated to be solved by a simple
longing; love was not the all-powerful magician of conventional
acceptance; there were other, no less profound, depths.

He resolutely abandoned his mere inchoate wanting, and considered the
elements of the position that were known to him. There was, in the
first place, that old, lamentable dereliction of Lichfield Stope's,
and its aftermath in his daughter. Millie had just recalled to
Woolfolk the duration, the activity, of its poison. Here there was no
possibility of escape by mere removal; the stain was within; and it
must be thoroughly cleansed before she could cope successfully,
happily, with life. In this, he was forced to acknowledge, he could
help her but little; it was an affair of spirit; and spiritual
values--though they might be supported from without--had their growth
and decrease strictly in the individual they animated.

Still, he argued, a normal existence, a sense of security, would
accomplish a great deal; and that in turn hung upon the elimination of
the second, unknown element--the reason for her backward glances, her
sudden, loud banalities, yesterday's mechanical repudiation of his
offered assistance and the implied wish f