s few men would find distasteful. To Lawrence
she had nothing to say. She knew that he knew that she had nothing
worth saying. She resented his penetration; she resented his pity;
and pity was the only light in which he found the thought of her
tolerable. He had thought to show her through his eyes widening vistas
of beauty and grandeur; and instead he caught glimpses through hers
of awful heights and depths of vacancy, peopled only by thinly veiled
phantoms of darkness and horror. But she could not look with his eyes,
and if she caught sight of such dismal prospects now and then she
could not be expected to want to look that way; it was as if she
sailed with a strong swimmer to whom she instinctively looked for help
and succor when storms came, but who could do nothing in fair weather
but steer the boat. A cloud or a breaking wave might remind her of
tempest and dark depths full of cruel creatures, but while the sun
shone and the sea was smooth she could hardly be blamed for preferring
merrier company than one who was forever on the lookout for foul
weather, and whose gravity and very reserve power of succor were
suggestive of distasteful things.

They came to no open rupture; what was there to say? His prevailing
mood toward her was compassion as for a lost soul. But many times that
mood broke down by its own weight. Her light, child-like laugh, her
high, clear voice talking so glibly and cheerily to people whom, as
like as not, he knew she despised, came to him with a hollow,
heartless ring that was maddening. He could not study; he could think
of nothing worthy. He would rush away from the sound that he was
frightened to perceive was becoming hateful. And the unconscious
influence of Stella was always a steadying and restoring one. He
believed he should never have married Cora but for the stimulus to
his compassion that he got from her. He did not know what he should do
now but for her stimulus of his forebearance, his tenderness, his
whole better nature. But the children got well by and by, and Stella
went away. Then Enfield stumbled along as best he could.

Some time afterward Lawrence had a letter from a friend: "I have an
opening here for a young surgeon of parts and character. It will be
the making of some one. Can you send me the name of some young fellow
you can recommend?"

Now, Lawrence happened to know that Stella had a cousin, a young
surgeon; in fact, she had asked him about his chance of success in