n't care.

"Then one night the widow went off to a lodge-meeting and left us alone.
Pearly and the gang came around and began throwing rocks at the house
and demanding that Georgia let them in. I was furious, and she was
nearly scared to death. She got her mother's pistol and asked me to
shoot it. I took it and, opening the door, fired into the night. The
gang slunk off, but Georgia was still frightened.

"We slipped out of our clothes in trembling silence and huddled together
in her mother's bed. She was crying, and I felt very brave. I put my
arms around her and comforted her. She became quiet by and by and
slipped her arms around me. After that we found ourselves.

"She said we were in love, and I guess we were. That night was the
beginning of my rebellious manhood. Her mother abused us roundly for
immoral little whiffits. I was put out, and after that the county kept
me. Georgia hated me, for she said I was to blame.

"I suppose that was all right, too, but it made me bitter against what
seemed to me an unjust world. I went back to school, hating. I never
stopped hating as long as I was there. It was misunderstanding from
first to last. I never ceased rebelling against punishment for
rebellion.

"It was a hopeless snarl, but it made me what I was when I entered
college, distant, sullen, and ferocious. My only joy was in my work, and
I spent all my spare time in the studio. Then the second summer I shot
off the gunpowder, and blindness came."

Lawrence lay back silent, then began again.

"After the accident it was a thousand times worse. I thought people
didn't like me because I was blind. They only pitied and misunderstood.
Misunderstood--that word might be my epitaph. It could certainly be
placed over my childhood's grave.

"It was in college that I started thinking. Thought out my plan of
militant egoism. It seemed to succeed, but all the time I was afraid it
was only pity that sold my work. You know, Claire, as you said, I've got
to do it all over again. All of it, building a new platform, a new
work-bench. I've got to allow for things. I've got to understand."

In her tension, Claire walked the floor. Would he never stop? That
glimpse into his life at the widow's--who was Pearly?--and what a tough
little gang he must have grown up with! Poor boy!

He did not talk much for a long time, then he kept repeating: "I must
build a new work-bench, Claire. That's the thing to do."

She felt at times that she