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s few men would find distasteful. To Lawrence she had nothing to say. She knew that he knew that she had nothing worth saying. She resented his penetration; she resented his pity; and pity was the only light in which he found the thought of her tolerable. He had thought to show her through his eyes widening vistas of beauty and grandeur; and instead he caught glimpses through hers of awful heights and depths of vacancy, peopled only by thinly veiled phantoms of darkness and horror. But she could not look with his eyes, and if she caught sight of such dismal prospects now and then she could not be expected to want to look that way; it was as if she sailed with a strong swimmer to whom she instinctively looked for help and succor when storms came, but who could do nothing in fair weather but steer the boat. A cloud or a breaking wave might remind her of tempest and dark depths full of cruel creatures, but while the sun shone and the sea was smooth she could hardly be blamed for preferring merrier company than one who was forever on the lookout for foul weather, and whose gravity and very reserve power of succor were suggestive of distasteful things. They came to no open rupture; what was there to say? His prevailing mood toward her was compassion as for a lost soul. But many times that mood broke down by its own weight. Her light, child-like laugh, her high, clear voice talking so glibly and cheerily to people whom, as like as not, he knew she despised, came to him with a hollow, heartless ring that was maddening. He could not study; he could think of nothing worthy. He would rush away from the sound that he was frightened to perceive was becoming hateful. And the unconscious influence of Stella was always a steadying and restoring one. He believed he should never have married Cora but for the stimulus to his compassion that he got from her. He did not know what he should do now but for her stimulus of his forebearance, his tenderness, his whole better nature. But the children got well by and by, and Stella went away. Then Enfield stumbled along as best he could. Some time afterward Lawrence had a letter from a friend: "I have an opening here for a young surgeon of parts and character. It will be the making of some one. Can you send me the name of some young fellow you can recommend?" Now, Lawrence happened to know that Stella had a cousin, a young surgeon; in fact, she had asked him about his chance of success in
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