ould never, he thought, have got through his
tortured school days without her. After she died he would not go to
school. He was not in any sense educated. His father and grandfather
had been illiterate men and he had inherited their underdeveloped
brain cells. But he loved poetry and read all he could get of it. It
overlaid his primitive nature with a curious iridescence of fancy and
furnished him with ideals and hungers his environment could never
satisfy. He loved beauty in everything. Moonrises hurt him with their
loveliness and he could sit for hours gazing at a white
narcissus--much to his aunt's exasperation. He was solitary by nature.
He felt horribly alone in a crowded building but never in the woods or
in the wild places along the shore. It was because of this that his
aunt could not get him to go to church--which was a horror to her
orthodox soul. He told her he would like to go to church if it were
empty but he could not bear it when it was full--full of smug, ugly
people. Most people, he thought, were ugly--though not so ugly as he
was--and ugliness made him sick with repulsion. Now and then he saw a
pretty girl at whom he liked to look but he never saw one that wholly
pleased him. To him, the homely, crippled, poverty-stricken Roger
Temple whom they all would have scorned, there was always a certain
subtle something wanting, and the lack of it kept him heartwhole. He
knew that this probably saved him from much suffering, but for all
that he regretted it. He wanted to love, even vainly; he wanted to
experience this passion of which the poets sang so much. Without it he
felt he lacked the key to a world of wonder. He even tried to fall in
love; he went to church for several Sundays and sat where he could see
beautiful Elsa Carey. She was lovely--it gave him pleasure to look at
her; the gold of her hair was so bright and living; the pink of her
cheek so pure, the curve of her neck so flawless, the lashes of her
eyes so dark and silken. But he looked at her as at a picture. When he
tried to think and dream of her, it bored him. Besides, he knew she
had a rather nasal voice. He used to laugh sarcastically to himself
over Elsa's feelings if she had known how desperately he was trying to
fall in love with her and failing--Elsa the queen of hearts, who
believed she had only to look to reign. He gave up trying at last, but
he still longed to love. He knew he would never marry; he could not
marry plainness, and beauty