es kissed him, but she did not kiss
him to-night, and he noted the fact as a man dying unattended in a
dungeon might test his own pulse. He longed to take the little hand so
close to his cheek and press it to his famished lips, but something told
him that she would (not openly, but inwardly) now actually shrink from
such a caress.

"No, don't think I am blue," he protested, fighting forward on his black
billows, and grimly smiling. "You are happy and I shall be for your
sake. You mustn't observe my cranky ways too closely. I'm all right."

"Somehow I can't exactly believe it." Tilly twisted a lock of his hair
between her slow, reluctant fingers. "You seem changed, a little,
anyway, and I think we ought to come to a thorough understanding right
now. You have an imagination, Joel. You used to write poetry to me, you
remember, and for all I know you may now be fancying all sorts of really
absurd things. Now be sensible. John and I _did_ love each other away
back there, but we were parted and for years I have thought of him as
dead. But now he is away off up there, and I am here with you and our
darling children. You love them, they love you--and--and you love me,
and I--love you. Now be sensible. Can you, even with a crazy flight of
your imagination, fancy that John and I ever again will or could be--be
like we once were? Throw the idea away if you have it. Of course, I must
be happy in discovering that my hasty desertion back there did not cost
him his life and Dora's. Oh, that thought worried me! I never let you
know how much it worried me! I guess I would have married you much
sooner than I did if I had not had that on my mind. But all that is past
and gone now. I'm here and John is away off up there. Your idea that he
still loves me is ridiculous on the face of it. What was I, even when he
was here? Only an ignorant country girl, while he has no doubt grown and
learned and altered in a thousand ways. I've seen successful men from
big cities. They don't seem to think as we do, or act or speak like us.
I'd be a silly dowdy to such a man. I think, of course, if it comes
about naturally, that his mother ought to go to him, but I don't think
he ever ought to--to come back here, and I am sure that he won't. I am
sure of that--I'm sure of it. He has been burnt once, as the saying is,
and that will be enough. But I predict that she will go to him. No, I'll
take that back. I said that, but I am not sure. Do you know, it is God'