's mind. Bridges.
She sat up in bed, mentally keen for the first time since dinner. "I
have built bridges in my time over which trains are passing at this
moment. I have fought torrents, and floods, and hurricanes, and
myself."

He was Paul Ellison, son and brother, and they had blotted him out of
their lives by destroying all physical signs of him. There was
something inhuman in the deliberateness of it, something unforgivable.

They had made no foolish attempt to live under an assumed name. They
had come from New York to the little valley in order to leave behind
the scene of their disgrace and all those who had known them. And they
had been extremely fortunate. They were all gently born, Elsa's
friends and acquaintances, above ordinary inquisitiveness, and they had
respected the aloofness of the Ellisons. Arthur was an inveterate
traveler. Half the year found him in Europe, painting a little,
writing a little less, frequenting the lesser known villages in France
and Italy. He let it be understood that he abhorred cities. In the
ten years they had appeared at less than a dozen social affairs.
Arthur did not care for horses, for hunting, for sports of any kind.
And yet he was sturdy, clear-eyed, fresh-skinned. He walked always; he
was forever tramping off to the pine-hooded hills, with his
painting-kit over his shoulders and his camp-stool under his arm.
Later, Elsa began to understand that he was a true scholar, not merely
an educated man. He was besides a linguist of amazing facility, a
pianist who invariably preferred as his audience his own two ears.
Arthur would have been a great dramatist or a great poet, if . . . If
what? If what? Ah, that had been the crux of it all, of her doubt, of
her hesitance. If he had fought for prizes coveted by mankind, if he
had thrown aside his dreams and gone into the turmoil, if he had taken
up a man's burden and carried it to success. Elsa, daughter of a man
who had fought in the great arena from his youth to his death, Elsa was
not meant for the wife of a dreamer.

Paul Ellison. What was his crime in comparison to his expiation of it?
He had built bridges, fought torrents, hurricanes, himself. No, he was
not a scholar; he saw no romance in the multifarious things he had of
necessity put his hand to: these had been daily matter-of-fact
occupations. A strange gladness seemed to loosen the tenseness of her
aching nerves.

Then, out of the real world about h