her to the quick.

"Who are you speaking to?" she flamed out at him.

He was speechless and abashed, and could only stare at her face, which
was white with anger.

"Don't you ever speak to me like that again, Billy," she commanded.

"Aw, can't you put up with a piece of bad temper?" he muttered, half
apologetically, yet half defiantly. "God knows I got enough to make me
cranky."

After he left the house she flung herself on the bed and cried
heart-brokenly. For she, who knew so thoroughly the humility of love,
was a proud woman. Only the proud can be truly humble, as only the
strong may know the fullness of gentleness. But what was the use, she
demanded, of being proud and game, when the only person in the world who
mattered to her lost his own pride and gameness and fairness and gave
her the worse share of their mutual trouble?

And now, as she had faced alone the deeper, organic hurt of the loss
of her baby, she faced alone another, and, in a way, an even greater
personal trouble. Perhaps she loved Billy none the less, but her love
was changing into something less proud, less confident, less trusting;
it was becoming shot through with pity--with the pity that is parent to
contempt. Her own loyalty was threatening to weaken, and she shuddered
and shrank from the contempt she could see creeping in.

She struggled to steel herself to face the situation. Forgiveness stole
into her heart, and she knew relief until the thought came that in the
truest, highest love forgiveness should have no place. And again she
cried, and continued her battle. After all, one thing was incontestable:
THIS BILLY WES NOT THE BILLY SHE HAD LOVED. This Billy was another man,
a sick man, and no more to be held responsible than a fever-patient
in the ravings of delirium. She must be Billy's nurse, without pride,
without contempt, with nothing to forgive. Besides, he was really
bearing the brunt of the fight, was in the thick of it, dizzy with the
striking of blows and the blows he received. If fault there was, it lay
elsewhere, somewhere in the tangled scheme of things that made men snarl
over jobs like dogs over bones.

So Saxon arose and buckled on her armor again for the hardest fight
of all in the world's arena--the woman's fight. She ejected from her
thought all doubting and distrust. She forgave nothing, for there was
nothing requiring forgiveness. She pledged herself to an absoluteness of
belief that her love and Billy's was unsul