room where the re-created Brian Kent kept his lonely
vigil? Did she, too, hear the voices of the river? Did she feel the
presence of that stream which poured its dark flood so mysteriously
through the night between herself and the man yonder?
Away back, somewhere in the past, the currents of their lives in the
onward flow of the river had drawn together. For a period of time, their
life-currents had mingled, and, with the stream, had swept onward as
one. Other influences--swirls and eddies and counter-currents of other
lives--had touched and intermingled until the current that was the man
and the current that was the woman had drawn apart. For months, they
had not touched; and, now, they were drawing nearer to each other again.
Would they touch? Would they again mingle and become one? What was this
mysterious, unseen, unknown, but always-felt, power of the river that
sets the ways of its countless currents as it sweeps ever onward in its
unceasing flow?
The door of her room opened. Harry Green entered as one assured of a
welcome. The woman at the window turned her head, but did not move.
Going to her, the man, with an endearing word, offered a caress; but she
put him aside. "Please, Harry,--please let me be alone to-night?"
"Why, Martha, dear! What is wrong?" he protested, again attempting to
draw her to him.
Resisting more vigorously, she answered: "Everything is wrong! You are
wrong! I am wrong! All life is wrong! Can't you understand? Please leave
me."
The man drew back, and spoke roughly in a tone of disgust: "Hell! I
believe you love that bank clerk as much as you ever did!"
"Well, and suppose that were true, Harry?" she answered, wearily.
"Suppose it were true,--that I did still love my husband? Could that
make any difference now? Can anything ever make any difference now? You
will tire of me before long, just as you have grown tired of the others
who were before me. Don't you suppose I know? You and our friends have
taught me many things, Harry. I know, now, that Brian's dreams were
right. That his dreams could never be realized, does not make them
foolish nor wrong. His dreams that seemed so foolish--such impossible
ideals--were more real, after all, than this life that we think so real.
WE are the dreamers,--we and our kind,--and our awakening is as sure to
come as that river out there is sure of reaching the sea."
The man laughed harshly: "You are quite poetical, to-night. I believe I
like you b
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