red to one mighty impulse.

At last the door closed and he stood alone with the disordered table and
the pushed back chairs, doggedly gathering himself. Then he went to the
doors and with a hand to each, pushed them swiftly apart.

She stood at the farther side of the room. She seemed to have fled
there, and yet she leaned toward him breathless, again with the under
lip caught fast in its quivering--helpless, piteously helpless. It was
this that stayed him. Had she utterly shrunk away, even had he found her
denying, defiant--the aroused man had prevailed. But seeing her so, he
caught at the back of a chair as if to hold himself. Then he gazed long
and exultingly into the eyes yielded so abjectly to his. For a moment it
filled him to see and know, to be certain that she knew and did not
deny. But the man in him was not yet a reasoning man--too lately had he
come to life.

He stepped eagerly toward her, to halt only when one weak white hand
faltered up with absurd pretension of a power to ward him off. Nor was
it her hand that made him stop then. That barrier confessed its
frailness in every drooping line. Again it was the involuntary
submission of her whole poise--she had actually leaned a little further
toward him when he started, even as her hand went up. But the helpless
misery in her eyes was still a defense, passive but sufficient.

Then she spoke and his tension relaxed a little, the note of helpless
suffering in her voice making him wince and fall back a step.

"Bernal, Bernal, Bernal! It hurts me so, hurts me so! It's the
Gratcher--isn't it hurting you, too? Oh, it must be!"

He retreated a little, again grasping the back of the chair with one
hand, but there was no restraint in his voice.

"Laugh, Nance, laugh! You know what laughing does to them!"

"Not to this one, Bernal--oh, not to this one!"

"But it's only a Gratcher, Nance! I've been asleep all these years. Now
I'm awake. I'm in the world again--here, do you understand, before you.
And it's a glad, good world. I'm full of its life--and I've money--think
of that! Yesterday I didn't know what money was. I was going to throw it
away--throw it away as lightly as I threw away all those good, precious
years. How much it seems now, and what fine, powerful stuff it is! And
I, like a sleeping fool, was about to let it go at a mere suggestion
from Allan."

He stopped, as if under the thrust of a cold, keen blade.

[Illustration: "He gazed long and exult