imself. He got her to marry him. Then he lost his
arm and they were poor and her voice went. I've seen where love goes. If
I married Johnny I'd go and live at Deutra's and I'd have kids, and old
Ma Deutra would hate me and scream at me just like my mother used to. It
would be going back, right back in the trap I've just come out of."

What she said gave me an entirely new vision of life and love. "They
were married and lived happy ever afterward" was what I had read in
books. Now I saw all at once the other side of the medal. It was my
first contact, too, with a nature strong enough to attempt to subdue
life to will. I had seen only the subservient ones who had accepted
life.

Deolda was a fierce and passionate reaction against destiny. It's a
queer thing, when you think of it, for a girl to be brought up face to
face with the wreck of a tragic passion, to grow up in the house with
love's ashes and to see what were lovers turned into an old hag and a
cantankerous, one-armed man nagging each other.

My aunt made one more argument. "What makes you get married to any of
'em, Deolda?"

Now Deolda looked at her with a queer look; then she gave a queer laugh
like a short bark.

"I can't stay here forever. I'm not going back to the mill."

Then my aunt surprised me by throwing her arms around Deolda and kissing
her and calling her "my poor lamb," while Deolda leaned up against my
aunt as if she were her own little girl and snuggled up in a way that
would break your heart.

One afternoon soon after old Conboy brought Deolda home before tea time,
and as she jumped out:

"Oh, all right!" he called after her. "Have your own way; I'll marry you
if you want me to!"

She made him pay for this. "You see," she said to my aunt, "I told you I
was going to marry him."

"Well, then come out motoring tonight when you've got your dishes done,"
called old Conboy.

"I'm going to the breakwater with Johnny Deutra tonight," said Deolda,
in that awful truthful way of hers.

"You see what you get," said my aunt, "if you marry that girl."

"I'll get worse not marrying her," said Conboy. "I may die any minute;
I've a high blood pressure, and maybe a stroke will carry me off any
day. But I've never wanted anything in many years as I want to hold
Deolda in my arms."

"Shame on you!" cried my aunt. "An old man like you!"

So things went on. Johnny kept right on coming. My aunt would fume about
it, but she did nothing. We were all un