r action of last autumn was the result of a
deep-rooted instinct for self-preservation--and that's certainly most
justifiable. It meant I'd expected too harsh a strength from you--" he
went on with a whimsical smile, which even the steadiness of his eyes
did not keep from sadness--"as though I'd hoped you could lift a
thousand-pound weight, like the strong woman in the side-show."

She responded to his attempt at lightness with as plain an undercurrent
of seriousness as his own. "Why do you live so that people have to lift
thousand-pound weights before they dare so much as say good-morning to
you?"

"Because I don't dare live any other way," he answered.

"It's hard on other people," Lydia ventured, but retreated hastily
before the first expression of upbraiding she had seen in his eyes. He
had so suddenly turned grave with the thought that it had been harder on
him than on anyone else that she cried out hurriedly, "But you didn't
help a bit--you left it all to me--"

She stopped, her face burning in uncertainty of the meaning of her
words.

Rankin's answer came with the swiftness of one who has meditated long on
a question. "I'm glad you've given me a chance to say what--I've wished
you might know. I thought it over and over at the time--and since--and
I'm sure it would not have been honorable--or delicate--or right, _not_
to leave it all to you. That much was yours to decide--whether you would
take the first step. It would have been a crime to have hurried or urged
you beyond what lay in your heart to do--or to have overborne you
against some deep-lying, innate instinct."

Lydia's voice was shaking in self-pity as she cried out, "Oh, if you
knew what the others--nobody _else_ was afraid to hurry or urge me to--"

She stopped and looked away, her heart beating rapidly with a flood of
recollections. Rankin's lips opened, but he shut them firmly, as though
he did not trust himself to speak. His large red hands closed savagely
on the handle of his tool-box. There was a silence between them.

The car began to move more slowly, and the conductor, standing up from
the seat where he had been dozing, remarked in a conversational tone to
a woman with two children near him, "Gardenton--this is the cross-roads
to Gardenton." Later, as the car stood still under the singing vibration
of the trolley-wire overhead, he added in the general direction of Lydia
and Rankin, now the only passengers, "Next stop is Wardsboro'!" His