her everything she wanted, had allowed her to do what she pleased
and had let her think that, through his miraculous handling of her
resources, she was doing it all herself. And the result was natural. For
the past two years he had been harassed with debt, racked with worries,
writhing this way and that, concerned only with the soul-tormenting
catastrophe that had overtaken him. About all else he had grown
careless. He had not been to see her the last year, he had written
seldom, and it appalled him to look back now on his own self-absorption
and to think how he must have appeared to June. And he had gone on in
that self-absorption to the very end. He had got his license to marry,
had asked Uncle Billy, who was magistrate as well as miller, to marry
them, and, a rough mountaineer himself to the outward eye, he had
appeared to lead a child like a lamb to the sacrifice and had found a
woman with a mind, heart and purpose of her own. It was all his work. He
had sent her away to fit her for his station in life--to make her fit to
marry him. She had risen above and now HE WAS NOT FIT TO MARRY HER. That
was the brutal truth--a truth that was enough to make a wise man laugh
or a fool weep, and Hale did neither. He simply went on working to make
out how he could best discharge the obligations that he had voluntarily,
willingly, gladly, selfishly even, assumed. In his mind he treated
conditions only as he saw and felt them and believed them at that moment
true: and into the problem he went no deeper than to find his simple
duty, and that, while the morning stars were sinking, he found. And it
was a duty the harder to find because everything had reawakened within
him, and the starting-point of that awakening was the proud glow in
Uncle Billy's kind old face, when he knew the part he was to play in the
happiness of Hale and June. All the way over the mountain that day his
heart had gathered fuel from memories at the big Pine, and down the
mountain and through the gap, to be set aflame by the yellow sunlight in
the valley and the throbbing life in everything that was alive, for the
month was June and the spirit of that month was on her way to him. So
when he rose now, with back-thrown head, he stretched his arms suddenly
out toward those far-seeing stars, and as suddenly dropped them with an
angry shake of his head and one quick gritting of his teeth that such a
thought should have mastered him even for one swift second--the thought