brace
yourself against doing it again. You make it a new starting-point. Isn't
that it?"

"Yes, but if you're like me!"

With her free hand she brushed back the shock of dark hair from his
forehead. It was the first touch of personal contact between them since
his sudden reappearance. "If one is like you, Thor, of course it's
harder. You're a terrific creature. I begin to see that now. I never
took it in before, because in general you're so restrained. I know it's
the people who are most restrained who can be swept most terribly by
passion--but I hadn't expected it of you. Even so, it's the sort of
thing which only goes with something big in the soul--"

He put up a hand protestingly. "Don't!"

"But I must. It ought to be said. You should understand it.
Fundamentally--I see it quite plainly now--you're the big primitive
creature that's only partially tamed by the tenderest of tender hearts.
Do you know what you remind me of?--of a great St. Bernard dog that asks
nothing better than to love every one and save life, but which when it's
roused...! You see what I mean," she went on, with a kind of soothing,
serious cajolery. "Thor dear, I was never so afraid of you as I've been
this night, and I never"--_loved_ was what she was going to say, but, as
on the day in the winter woods, she suppressed the word for another--"I
never admired you so much. I'm going to make a confession. What you say
you felt toward Claude is what I've often felt myself in--in glimpses.
God knows I don't say that to malign him. I shouldn't say it at all if
it were not to point out that you wouldn't have done him any more
harm--not when it came to the act--than I myself. Would you, now?"

He hung his head, murmuring, brokenly, "No."

"What we've got to see is that you're very human, isn't it? and that's
what they mean--Uncle Sim and Dr. Hilary--when they say that you're face
to face with a great moral test. They mean that after you've used
what--what's happened within the last few hours--as you can use it--as
you _can_ use it, Thor dear--you'll be a far stronger man than you were
before--and you were a strong man already."

With eyes downcast he murmured words to the effect that it was difficult
to see the way.

"Won't the way be to take each new thing as it comes--and there are some
very hard things still to come, you know!--as a step to climb by, to get
it under our feet as something that holds us up instead of over our
heads as something