ry. And the next day he
flung himself into his work as he had not been able ever to do before;
he made it his world, and resolutely shut out the buoyant voice and the
personality so intimately known, so unknown. He tried to be so tired,
at night, that he could not think of her; and he succeeded far enough
to make living a possibility, which is all that any of us can do
sometimes. Often the thought of her, of her words, of her letters, of
the gay voice telling of a hideous future, stabbed him suddenly in the
night, in the crowded day. But he put it aside with a mighty effort
each time, and each time gained control.

And then it was May, and in June he was to have his vacation. And once
more the doubt of his fitness for his work was upon him. The stress of
the tremendous gait of the big parish, and the way he had thrown his
strength by handfuls into the work, had told. If a healthy and happy
man uses brain and heart and body carefully it is perhaps true that he
cannot overwork. But if a high-strung man gives himself out all day
long, every day, recklessly, and is at the same time under a mental
strain, he is likely to be ill. Geoffrey McBirney was close to an
illness; his attitude toward life was warped; he was reasoning that he
had made the girl a test case and that the case had failed; that it was
now his duty to stand by the test and give up his work. And then, one
day, the letter came. The weather had turned warm in Forest Gate and
Arline Baker had got out her summer blouses.

October 10th [it was dated].

This morning, after I had read your letter it was as if I were being
beaten to earth by alternate blows, like thunder, like lightning,
fierce and beautiful and terrible, of joy and of grief.

For I care--I care--I can't wait to tell you--I'm so glad, so
triumphant, so wretched that I care--that it's in me to care,
desperately, as much as any woman or man since the foundation of the
world. It's in me--once you said it wasn't--and you have brought it to
life, and I care--I love you. I want to let you come so that it left
me blind and shaking to send that telegram. But there isn't any
question. If I let you come I would be wicked. I, with my handful of
broken life, to let you manacle your splendid years to a lump of stone?
Could you think I would do that? Don't you see that, because I care,
I'm so much more eager not to let you? I'm selfish and my first answer
to that letter was a rush of happin