ng this week that Jasper has allowed her!

With the last rays of the sun, I had found time to read a long, dear
letter from Richard Hall, and though I had transferred it from my pocket
to my desk, while I dressed for the afternoon, its crackle was still in
my mind. I wondered what it all meant, this dissatisfied longing that
human beings send out across time and distance, one to and for another.

If a woman's heart were really like a great big golden chalice, full to
the brim with the kind of love she is taught God wants her to have in it
for all mankind, both men and women, why shouldn't she offer drafts of
it to every one who is thirsty, brothers as well as sisters? I wonder
how that would solve Jane's problem of emotional equality! I do love
Dicky--and--and I do love Polk--with an inclination to dodge. Now, if
there were enough of the right sort of love in me, I ought to be able to
get them to see it, and drink it for their comforting, and have no
trouble at all with them about their wanting to seize the cup, drain
all the love there is in it, shut it away from the rest of the
world--and then neglect it.

Yes, why can't I love Polk as I love you, Jane, and have him enjoy it?
Yes, why?

I think if I had Dicky off to myself for a long time, and very gently
led him up to the question of loving him hard in this new way, he might
be induced to sip out of the cup just to see if he liked it--and it
might be just what he craved, for the time being; but I doubt it. He
would storm and bluster at the idea.

Of course the Crag would let a woman love him in any old kind of new or
experimental way she wanted to, if it made her happy. He would take her
cup of tenderness and drink it as if it were sacramental wine, on his
knees. But he doesn't count. He has to be man to so many people that
there is danger of his becoming a kind of superman. Think of the old
Mossback being a progressive thing like that! I laughed out loud at the
idea--but the echo was dismal.

I wonder if Sallie will marry him.

And as I sat and thought and puzzled, the moonlight got richer and more
glowing, and it wooed open the throats of the thousand little
honeysuckle blossoms, clinging to the vine on the trellis, until they
poured out a perfect symphony of perfume to mingle in a hallelujah from
the lilacs and roses that ascended to the very stars themselves.

I had dropped my head on my arms, and let my eyes go roaming out to the
dim hills that banked a