the silent attack of her
look. Why hadn't he a right to do it? A man should look out for
himself. But he'd have stayed and rotted with the old law office if
he'd felt that she would take it that way.

"You mean more to me than success!" he said.

"No more of that, please!" she cried. After that cry, she fell into
dignified silence as the only defence against the double attack from
him and from the half of her that yearned for him. From her silence he
himself grew silent until, with a boyish shake of his
shoulders--lovable but comically inadequate--he bade her good night.

"You'll cool off!" he said at the door.

"Good bye," she responded simply.

"No, it's good night," he answered.

She woke next morning with a sense of vacancy in heart and mind.
Something was gone. She did nothing for a week but justify herself for
calling that something back, or nerve herself to let it go.

On the one hand, her mind told her that he had done the ungrateful,
the treasonable thing. It did not matter that he might have done it
through mere lack of finer perception. That was part of his
intolerability. On the other hand, her heart ran like a shuttle
through a web of his smiles, his illuminations, the shiver, as from a
weapon suddenly drawn, of his unexpected presence, even his look when
he stood at the door to receive her final good bye. The woof of that
web was the sense of vacancy in her--the unconquerable feeling that a
thing by which she had lived was utterly lost.

And where would he go if she let him go? Ah, the inn was ready, the
room was swept. He would go inevitably to Kate Waddington. That would
be hard to bear. Sense of justice was strong in Eleanor; she realized
the ungenerosity of this emotion while she continued to harbor it. But
was there not justice in it after all? Kate Waddington could grasp,
could guide, only the worst part of him. Kate Waddington had in her no
guidance for the better Bertram Chester, who must be in him somewhere.
She hugged this justification to herself. Perhaps it was not right to
let him go; perhaps her heart and her duty were as one.

A cock quail came out from the chapparal, saw her, and bobbed back;
the feet of his flock rustled the twigs. Now he was raising his spring
call--"muchacho!" "muchacho!" Clearer and slighter came the call of
his mate--"muchacho!" "muchacho!" A ground squirrel shook the
laurel-bush at her side, so that its buds brushed her shoulder. The
cock quail came back i