as no ground for actual uneasiness concerning
Rowan's health, for Rowan's neighbors assured him in response to
his inquiries that he was well and at work on the farm.

"If he is in trouble, why does he not come and tell me? Am I not
worth coming to see? Has he not yet understood what he is to me?
But how can he know, how can the young ever know how the old love
them? And the old are too proud to tell." He wrote letters and
tore them up.

As we stand on the rear platform of a train and see the mountains
away from which we are rushing rise and impend as if to overwhelm
us, so in moving farther from his past very rapidly now, it seemed
to follow him as a landscape growing always nearer and clearer.
His mind dwelt more on the years when hatred had so ruined him,
costing him the only woman he had ever asked to be his wife,
costing him a fuller life, greater honors, children to leave behind.

He was sitting alone in his rear office the middle of one
afternoon, alone among his books. He had outspread before him
several that are full of youth. Barbee was away, the street was
very quiet. No one dropped in--perhaps all were tired of hearing
him talk. It was not yet the hour for Professor Hardage to walk
in. A watering-cart creaked slowly past the door and the gush of
the drops of water sounded like a shower and the smell of the dust
was strong. Far away in some direction were heard the cries of
school children at play in the street. A bell was tolling; a green
fly, entering through the rear door, sang loud on the dusty
window-panes and then flew out and alighted on a plant of
nightshade springing up rank at the doorstep.

He was not reading and his thoughts were the same old thoughts. At
length on the quiet air, coming nearer, were heard the easy roll of
wheels and the slow measured step of carriage horses. The sound
caught his ear and he listened with quick eagerness. Then he rose
trembling and waited. The carriage had stopped at the door; a
moment later there was a soft low knock on the lintel and Mrs.
Meredith entered. He met her but she said: "May I go in there?"
and entered the private office.

She brought with her such grace and sweetness of full womanly years
that as she seated herself opposite him and lifted her veil away
from the purity of her face, it was like the revelation of a shrine
and the office became as a place of worship. She lifted the veil
from the dignity and seclusion of her life. S