eart was great, and he stooped and pitied her gently and passed on.
After a time another man came by, a good and noble man, and he offered
her love so wonderful she hadn't brains to comprehend how or why it
was."

The Girl's voice trailed off as if she were too weary to speak further,
while she leaned her head against a pillar and gazed with dull eyes
across the lake.

"And your question," suggested the Harvester at last.

She roused herself. "Oh, the question! Why this----if in time, and
after she had tried and tried, love to equal his simply would not come
would----would----she be wrong to PRETEND she cared, and do the very
best she could, and hope for real love some day? Oh David, would she?"

The Harvester's face was whiter than the Girl's. He pounded the chisel
into the joist savagely.

"Would she, David?"

"Let me understand you clearly," said the man in a dry, breathless
voice. "Did she love this first man to whom she came under obligations?"

The Girl sat gazing across the lake and the tortured Harvester stared at
her.

"I don't know," she said at last. "I don't know whether she knew what
love was or ever could. She never before had known a man; her heart was
as undeveloped and starved as her body. I don't think she realized love,
but there was a SOMETHING. Every time she would feel most grateful and
long for the love that was offered her, that 'something' would awake and
hurt her almost beyond endurance. Yet she knew he never would come. She
knew he did not care for her. I don't know that she felt she wanted him,
but she was under such obligations to him that it seemed as if she must
wait to see if he might not possibly come, and if he did she should be
free."

"If he came, she preferred him?"

"There was a debt she had to pay----if he asked it. I don't know whether
she preferred him. I do know she had no idea that he would come, but the
POSSIBILITY was always before her. If he didn't come in time, would she
be wrong in giving all she had to the man who loved her?"

The Harvester's laugh was short and sharp.

"She had nothing to give, Ruth! Talk about worm-wood, colocynth apples,
and hemlock! What sort of husks would that be to offer a man who gave
honest love? Lie to him! Pretend feeling she didn't experience. Endure
him for the sake of what he offered her? Well I don't know how calmly
any other man would take that proceeding, Ruth, but tell your friend for
me, that if I offered a woman the deep