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Empty Sack

<h2>CHAPTER XXVIII</h2> "What I don't understand, Bob," Collingham said, with faint indignation in his tone, "is whether you're a married man or not." "I'm a married man, father, all right." "Then why don't you live like a married man? I suppose you know that people are saying all sorts of things." Bob considered the simplest way in which to put his case. It was the afternoon of the day following the end of Teddy's trial, and his father was giving him a lift homeward from the bank. It being winter, dark was already closing in, and though they were out of the city, great arc-lights were still strung along the roadways, which were otherwise lighted by flashes from hundreds of motor cars. "I've never said anything about this before," the father resumed, before Bob had found the right words, "because we'd all agreed—your mother, Edith, and myself—that we wouldn't hamper you with questions about it while you were busy with something else. But now that that's over—" "Part of it is over, but only part of it. We've a long road to travel yet." "If the appeal is denied, as I expect it will be, you'll have to let me in on the application to the Governor for clemency. I think I'd have some influence there." "Thanks, dad. That'll be a help." He asked, after further thinking, "Should you like me to live as a married man—considering who it is I've married?" Knowing that the question was a searching one, Bob found the reply much what he expected. "I want to see the best thing come out of a mixed-up situation. I don't deny that all these problems bother me; but we have them on our hands, and so there's no more to be said. We've got to find the wise thing to do, and do it. That's all I'm after." "That's all I'm after, myself, dad." "I don't admit any responsibility for all this muss," Collingham declared, as if his son had accused him. "I don't care what anyone thinks; my conscience is clear." "Of course, dad; of course!" "But since things have happened as they have, I'd like to make them as easy as I can for everyone; and whatever money can do—" "Or recognition?" They came back to the original question. "Yes; recognition, too—as soon as we've anyone to recognize. What I don't understand is all this backing and filling—" "Have you asked mother?" "In a way; and she's just as mysterious as you." Bob tried another avenue. "You saw Jennie yourself, didn't you?" "Once; yes." "What did you think of her?" "What any man would think of her. She was very charming and—and appealing." "Did you think anything else?" The father turned sharply. "What makes you ask?" "Because it's possible you did." "Well, I did. What of it?" "Only this—that that's the thing I want to nail before I bring her to you as my wife." "Then why don't you go to work and nail it?" He found the words he was in search of. "Partly because I've other things to do; partly because I feel that, by giving it its time, it will nail itself; and, most of all, for the reason that neither she nor I want to take the—the great happiness which we feel is coming to us in the end while—while all this other thing is in the air. I wonder if you understand me." "More or less." "It's as if we'd accidentally put the cart of marriage before the horse of engagement. Do you see? Nominally we're married; but really we're only engaged. We can't be married—we don't want to be married—till other things are off our minds." With this bit of explanation, the Collinghams began to live once more as if nothing had occurred. It was not easy; but by dint of skimming on the surface they were able to manage it. That is to say, Bob came and went, and they asked him no more questions, while on his part he continued to nerve Teddy and his sisters for another test. If there was anyone noticeably different, it was Junia. Always quick to tack according to the wind, she seemed almost to have changed her course. In putting the best face on Edith's marriage and Bob's complications she had adopted the new ideals that kept her in the movement. "It's the war," she explained to her intimates. "We're all different. Life as we used to live it begins to seem so empty. We weren't real; we people who spent our time entertaining and being entertained. It's all very well to say that we're much the same since the war as we were before, but it isn't so. I know I'm not. I'm quite a revolutionist. I may not have made much progress, but I'm certainly more in touch with reality." With this transition, it became natural to speak of her son-in-law. "Such a wonderful fellow—all mind, you know, but the type that helps so many of us to find our way through the mists of materialism and selfishness out to the great big ends. To me, it's like a new life just to hear him talk, and I can't help feeling it providential that he's found a wife like Edith. She's an extraordinary girl to be my child—intellectual and practical at once. She can keep her husband company in all his researches and yet cook him a good dinner if their little maid is out. Is there anything so astonishing in life as our own children and what they turn out to be?" This was a transition, too, leading her to speak of Bob's affairs in the tone of one who, though puzzled, takes them sympathetically. "And yet I think it's enlarging. Though we've kept only on the outer edge of the drama through which Bob has been going with the girl he's married, the whole thing has deepened his life so much that it couldn't help deepening ours. It's broadened us, too, I think, giving us an insight into lives so different from our own. That's what we need so much, it seems to me, that kind of broadening. It's going to solve a lot of our national problems which at present seem to be insoluble. Yes; Bob is still at home with us, and I tell you frankly that I don't know what is coming out of it. It's all so queer and independent and modern. I'm old-fashioned, and I don't pretend to see through these young people's ways. But I'm Bob's mother, and through all his developments—and he is developing—I'm going with him." So Junia talked, and talked so much that she was in danger of talking herself round. The instinct to be in the front line of fashion had something to do with it, but self-persuasion had more. The thing of the hour being the throwing over of the old social code, Junia wouldn't have been Junia if she hadn't done it; but, even so, the creeping-in of compunction toward Bob took her by surprise. She had told herself hitherto that she loved him so much that she would work for his permanent happiness even at the cost of his temporary pain; but now she began to fear that what had seemed to her his temporary pain might prove the very life of his life. She came to this perception through reading in the newspapers the accounts of the Follett boy's trial. By the tacit convention which the Collinghams had established, that they had nothing to do with it, she never spoke of it to Bradley or Edith, nor did they speak of it to her; but she kept herself informed, and knew the devotion with which Bob gave himself to Jennie and her family. The boy's condemnation hit her hard. When Bradley came home that night, she saw that it had also hit him. "I'm worth about five million dollars at a guess," he confided to her, "and I'd cheerfully have given four of them if this thing hadn't happened." "But, Bradley dear, you had nothing to do with it." "I know I hadn't," he declared, savagely; "and yet I'd—I'd do as I say." But it wasn't Bradley she was most sorry for; nor was it for the Follett boy. She was sorry that, because of conditions which she herself had fostered, Bob would never reap the fruit of a love in which he had been so chivalrous. She didn't see how he could. Just as there was a natural Bradley and a standardized one, so there was a natural and a standardized Junia. The natural Junia had long seemed dead; but the bigness of the love which she saw daily and hourly exemplified moved her to the painful stirrings of new life. Meanwhile Bob went with Teddy up the remaining steps by which he mounted his Calvary. He stood near the cage on the morning when the boy was brought up for sentence, witnessing his coolness. On being asked if he had anything to say before sentence was pronounced he replied: "Nothing, sir, except to thank you for giving me such a fair trial." The words were spoken in a firmer voice than those which followed: "The court, in consideration of your crime of murder in the first degree, sentences you to the punishment of death by the passage of a current of electricity through your body, within the week beginning...." <hr class="docutils"/> When the appeal for a new trial was denied, it was Bob who informed Teddy. When all efforts to obtain Executive clemency had failed, it was Bob again who broke the news. When the boy requested that his mother and sisters should omit their next visit to Bitterwell—should wait till he sent them word before coming again—it was Bob who conveyed the request. Bitterwell, the great penitentiary, was twenty miles from Pemberton Heights, and through the winter they had gone to see him some thirty-odd times. They went in couples. Gladys and her mother, Jennie and Gussie, keeping each other company. The visits were less difficult than might have been expected because of Teddy's cheerfulness. Of the request to wait before coming again, they didn't at first seize the significance. While frank with them about everything else, Bob had never given them the date of the week the judge had named, nor had they asked for it. If they did so ask, he meant to tell them; but they seemed to divine his intention. Perhaps they divined the intention in this intimation from Teddy. At any rate, they didn't question it, or rebel against it. It followed on visits first of one pair and then of the other, both of which had been so normal as almost to pass as gay. That is, Teddy's spirits had infected theirs, and they had parted from him smiling. That of Jennie and Gussie had been the first of the two, and he had sent them off with a joke. "My boy, I'm proud of you," had been Lizzie's farewell words to him. "Walk firmly, with your head erect, and never, never be sorry for anything you've done." "Good old ma! The best ever! I sure am proud of you! What'll you bet that we don't have some good times together yet?" A psychologist would have said that by suggestion and autosuggestion they strengthened each other and themselves; but whatever the process, the result was evident. Bob had given them the verb "to carry on," so that "carrying on" became at once an objective and a driving force. Gussie and Gladys went regularly to work; Jennie took care of the house and her mother. The latter task had become the more imperative, for the reason that, after Teddy's request that they should suspend their visits, she began to fail. It was not that she was hurt by it, but rather that she took it as a signal. In the efforts to be strong, they were helped by the fact that, not long after Teddy's removal to Bitterwell, Edith Ayling had come to see them, all of her own initiative. She had repeated the visit many times, and had Gussie and Gladys go to see her at Cathedral Heights. Jennie had never been able to leave home. "I didn't say anything about it to you," Edith explained to Bob, after the occasion of her breaking the ice, "because I wanted to do it on my own. Quite apart from you and Jennie, I feel that our lots have become involved and that we Collinghams have some responsibility. I don't say responsibility for what, because I don't know; and yet I feel—" Unable to say what she felt, she elided to the personal. "Jennie I don't get at. She's so silent—so shut away. The mother has never been well enough to see me. But the two younger girls I'm really getting to know very well and to be very fond of. They're intelligent down to the finger-tips, and with a little guidance I'm sure they could do big things." "What kind of things?" "I should train Gladys along intellectual lines, and Gussie was born for the stage. I know that Ernest and I could help them, if you thought it all right, and we should love doing it. You must read what he says in his new book, Salvage, as to getting people into the tasks for which they are fitted and in which they can be happy. He thinks that a lot of our nonproductiveness comes from the people who'd love doing one thing being compelled to do another, and that if we could only help the individuals we come across to find their natural jobs...." It was Edith also who unconsciously helped her mother out of the trap in which she had found herself caught. "Oh, by the way, whom do you think I met in the street the other day? No less a person than Hubert Wray, just back from California. And that reminds me. He told me you had bought his big picture that everyone was talking about last year. Where is it? Why did you never say anything about it?" Edith was spending a day in May at Collingham Lodge, and was walking with her mother between rows of irises. "Come in," Junia said. "I'll show you. Then you'll understand." But not till "Life and Death" had been drawn from its hiding place and propped against the wall was Edith allowed to enter her mother's room. She advanced slowly, her eyes on the canvas. Junia waited for the shock. "So that's it," Edith said, at last. "It isn't a thing I should want to live and die with—I never can understand that fancy people have for nudes—but I see it's very fine." "And is that all you see?" "All I see? I see it has a meaning, of course, but—" Junia's throat felt dry. "Don't you—don't you recognize anybody?" "Who? The Brasshead woman? I shouldn't know her from Eve." Junia crept nearer. "'The Brasshead woman'? Who's she? What are you talking about?" "Why, the model who sat for it. Hubert told me all about her. He said she wasn't his ideal for the part—rather a poor lot as a woman—but he couldn't get anyone better." She added, on examining the features, "I don't think she's bad, considering what he wanted." "Doesn't she—doesn't she remind you of—of Bob's wife?" "About as much as she does of you. Surely that's not the reason why you hid the thing away!" "I—I did think—I was afraid—that people might see a resemblance—" Edith made an inarticulate sound intended for derision. "As a matter of fact, Hubert said it was probably a good thing for him to be obliged to paint some one else than Jennie. He'd been painting her so much that he was in danger of painting her into everything, like Andrea del Sarto with his wife." "Then you—you don't think that he's painted her in here?" Edith looked again. "Well, if you put it that way—and you were crazy to find a likeness—perhaps about the brows—and down here at the curve of the cheek and neck—but no! Not really! This is a carnal woman, and Jennie's a thing of the spirit." She dismissed the subject as of no further importance. "Do tell me. Is there anyone in New York who reglazes these English chintzes?" So Junia made new plans, waiting for Bob to come home to dinner in order to meet him on the threshold, throw her arms about his neck, and give him the glad facts. But Bob sent a telephone message that he would not be home to dinner, that he would not be home that night. No one was to worry, and he would turn up at breakfast in the morning. It was all the information he gave because, by special permission from the warden, and under a solemn promise not to convey anything to the prisoner that would enable him to cheat the law, he was spending the night at Bitterwell. He was spending it in a low one-storied building some sixty feet long and not more than twenty in width. Its arrangements were simple. On entering, you came into a corridor some six feet wide, running the length of seven little rooms. The seven little rooms were each furnished with a cot, a fixed wash-basin, a table, and a chair. Each had, however, this peculiarity—that the end toward the corridor had no wall. Instead of a wall it had long, strong perpendicular white bars, some two or three inches apart, and running from ceiling to floor. The inmate was thus visible at all times, like an animal in a cage. In the corridor were half a dozen chairs of the kitchen variety, and at the end a little yellow door. The little yellow door led into a room of which the chief piece of furniture was a chair vaguely suggestive of an armchair in a smoking room, though with some singular attachments. Around it in a semicircle were some eight or ten other chairs similar to those in the corridor. In one corner was a walled-off space that might have housed a dynamo; in the other a stack of brooms and mops. As a passageway gave access to this room, and the yellow door was carefully kept closed, Bob was not required to see within. Of the seven little rooms four were empty, and three had occupants. At one end was a negro; at the other an Italian; Teddy was in the center. Outside, there was a guard for the Italian, another for the negro, while for Teddy there were two. They were big, husky fellows, three Irishmen and a Swede, genial, good-natured souls to whom their duties had become a matter of course. There was something of the matter of course in the whole situation, even to Teddy and Bob. The human mind being ready to accept anything to which it is led by steps sufficiently graded, both young men were attuned to finding themselves as they were. As they were meant that Teddy clung to one of the bars from within, and Bob to the same bar from without. They talked through the open spaces, being able to do it quietly because they were so close. "You don't think I'm afraid, do you, Bob? I should have been afraid if it hadn't been for you. You've bucked me up something—well, there are no words for it." "Let it go without words, Teddy. Don't try to say it." "I like to say it," he grinned. "Or, rather, I'd like to say it if I could. I like trying to say it, even when I can't." That was all for the time; but after some minutes, Teddy's hand stole over Bob's big paw as it held to the bar, so that they held to it together. It was Bob who broke the silence next. "I didn't tell you, Teddy—I've only just found it out—that dad's been taking care of Mrs. Flynn and her kiddies and means to go on doing it." "That's good," the boy sighed. "It takes about the last thing off my mind." So they talked spasmodically, never saying much, and yet saying all the things for which language has no words. At intervals the Italian showed his sympathy by groaning heavily, which was generally a signal for the negro to begin singing, in a cottony voice, the first verse of "Safe in the Arms of Jesus." Teddy apologized for them as a host for unseemly members of his household. "They're good guys, all right. That's just their way of letting me know they feel for me. It's funny how kind hearted some mutt will be who's committed a cold-blooded murder." He had probably been following this train of thought for some minutes when he said, in a reasoning tone: "What can the law do with fellows of our sort? Look at the thing straight now. We've got good in us, of course; but you can't trust us to hold our horses. I don't blame them for what they're giving me—hardly any. Only, I'll be darned if it doesn't make me surer that all this is only an experiment—a way of finding out how not to do it—so that we can make the next go a better one." They discussed this topic in a desultory way, not so much letting it drop as pursuing it each in his own thought. Teddy picked up the line again after an interval of time, and some distance farther on. "I suppose you can't believe that you come to a place where you know you're through and are in a hurry to get on. Well, you do. I guess old people like ma reach there, anyhow; and young people, too, when they're—when they're like me. I've had my shot—and I've miffed it. Now I'm all on edge to have another try. I'm so crazy about that that the thing that's to happen first doesn't seem anything—very much." The hours wore on, but it seemed to Bob a night to which there was no time. Though the support he brought to Teddy was merely that of companionship, he felt that the boy was outstripping him. In Teddy's own phrase, he was "moving on," but moving on very fast. Bob couldn't tell how he knew this; he only felt himself being left behind. Teddy was quite right; his old experiment was over, and some of the exaltation of the new one was already breaking through. That was the meaning of his silences, his abstractions. That was why he came out of each such spell with a smile that grew more luminous. The Italian and the negro fell asleep. The four guards talked less to one another. Clutching the bar grew tiring. Brannigan, one of Teddy's guards, brought up a chair, offering it to Bob. "Why don't you sit down? It'll be quite a while yet." Bob took the chair, Teddy the one inside the cell. Bringing it as close to the bars as possible, he thrust his fingers through the opening to touch Bob's hand. Bob closed the fingers within his palm, and so held them. "I'm not going to send any message to ma and the girls. They know I love them. You can't add anything to that." A sidelong smile stole through the bars. "I love you too, Bob. I guess it's a bum thing to say, but to-night—well, it's different—and I'm going to say it. I can't do anything to thank you; but it may mean something to you to have me loving you like the devil all the way from—from over there." "It means something to me now." "Then that's all right." The Italian breathed heavily. The negro snored. The guards were bored and somnolent. Teddy might have been asleep except for the look and the smile that every now and then crept through the bars toward his companion. Suddenly he pulled his fingers from Bob's clasp, jumped to his feet, and held out his arms. "All right, ma! I'm ready!" The cry was so loud and joyous that Bob sprang up. Brannigan lumbered forward. "Been dreamin'," he explained. "Just as well if he has." Teddy looked about him in bewilderment. "No, I haven't been. I wasn't asleep. I was wide awake. I guess you'll think I'm dippy, Bob; but I did see ma. 'Pon my soul I did! She was right there." He pointed to the spot. "She looked lovely, too—young, like—and yet it was ma all right. She wanted me to come. That's why I jumped. Oh, well! Perhaps I am dippy. But it's funny, isn't it?" He was so preoccupied with this happening as not to notice sounds in the outer passage and beyond the yellow door. Even when he did, it was with no more than a partial cognizance. "Listen!" he said once. "There they are. It'll be only a few minutes now. I'm not going to let you go in there, Bob. Funny about ma, isn't it?" The sounds grew louder. The guards were moving about. Behind the yellow door people seemed to enter. There was the scraping of chairs as they sat down. The Italian woke and howled dismally. The negro shouted his hymn. Teddy was far away on the wings of speculation; but he came back to say: "If ma had gone ahead of me, I know she'd like nothing better than to come and give me a lift over. But she hasn't gone ahead of me. She's over there in Indiana Avenue. That's the funny part of it. What do you suppose it means?" Bob didn't know. Neither had he time to offer an opinion, because the main door opened and the warden appeared, accompanied by the chaplain, the doctor, the principal keeper, and three other men whom Teddy didn't know. "Here they are!" Teddy whispered, as if their coming was a relief. The warden advanced to the central cell. The door was unlocked. Teddy stood on the threshold. "Thank you, warden. I suppose I can say good-by to my friend?" Permission was given. Teddy stepped out into the corridor. "You'd better go now, Bob. No use in your staying any longer." He nodded toward the men standing round him. "They'll handle me gently. I'm not afraid." Their hands clasped; but the boy was only a boy, loving and in need of love. Before Bob knew what was happening, Teddy's arms were about his neck, in a long, desperate embrace. A gulp that was almost a sob from each—and it was over. "All right, boys. I'm ready. Go to it." The words were spoken steadily. Bob limped toward the door. A guard unlocked it. "Say, Bob!" It was Teddy's voice again. Bob turned. The lad had taken off his collar, no more conscious of the act than if he was going to bed. One of the strange men was kneeling on one knee, making a significant slit in a leg of Teddy's trousers. "Say, Bob! I wonder—if it doesn't take you too far out of your way-if you'd mind driving round by the house? You see, if anything has happened to ma, why, the girls'll be all up in the air, poor things!" Bob nodded because he couldn't trust himself to words—and so it was the end. <hr class="docutils"/> Out in the air it seemed to him as if he had dreamed and waked up. The May night was so exquisite, so hallowing, that the walls of Bitterwell were mellow and enchanted against the dome of stars. Even in these grim courts the scent of growing things was sweet. Driving in the deadest hours of night over the long flat road, he was too tired to think. His imagination didn't try to follow Teddy, because it had become an instinct to spring to the need to "carry on." Teddy was behind him. There were other things in front; and his mind was already with them. And yet not actively. After he had slept he would be able to take them up; but just now his main desire was to get home to bed. Nothing but that would dispel this overweight of emotion. Along the familiar road he drove mechanically. Even Teddy's last request, though it formed an intention, was hardly in his mind. At Bond's Corner, where the roads forked, to the right to Pemberton Heights, to the left to the bridge that would take him over toward Marillo, he was so nearly asleep that he might have gone straight on homeward had he not been startled by seeing a man and a woman standing in the middle of the road. He jammed down the service and emergency brakes, swinging to the right. The fact that they stood facing him without getting out of his way both amazed him and rendered him indignant. Turning to look at so strange a pair of pedestrians, he saw—Teddy and his mother. They were not quite on the road, but a little above it. Neither were they in the dark like other things around, but shining with a light of their own. Neither were they shadowy apparitions, but definite, vital, forcible. They were dressed as he had generally seen them, and yet they wore a kind of radiance. The mother's arm was over her boy's shoulder, but Teddy was waving his hand. Smiles were on both faces, on the lips, in the eyes, and somehow in the personality. Bob was not frightened, but he was thrilled. It seemed to him that they stayed long enough to overcome all the doubts of his senses. Though he pressed on the brakes, the car went a number of yards before he could bring it to a standstill; and yet they never left his side. They didn't exactly move; they were only there—living, lovely, sending out love as if it had been light, wrapping him round and round. It was so vivid, so much a fact, that when the car stopped and he saw no one there, he was amazed once more to find himself alone. He couldn't drive on at once. He lingered—staring at the spot where they had stood, looking over the wide, dim country, gazing up at the stars in their yearning infinitude. He tried to persuade himself that his own mind had projected something unreal in itself; but he couldn't throw off the extraordinary happiness the vision left behind it. Before reaching Indiana Avenue he had decided on a course. If there were no lights in the house, he would drive on homeward. If there were he would stop. At this hour in the very early morning, unless something unusual had happened, there would of course be none. But there were lights. At sound of his approach, Pansy gave a little silvery yelp. Jennie opened the door before he had time to ring. "Come in, Bob. I saw your car from the window." In the living-room Gussie and Gladys, wearing their dressing-gowns, cried out their relief at seeing him. It was the situation Teddy had foreseen, in which they were all "up in the air." As usual, Gladys was the spokesman. "Oh, Bob, we're so glad to have you. We didn't know what to do. Momma—" A sob stopped her, but Jennie was more calm. "Momma's gone, Bob. Gussie went into her room about half past ten to take her the glass of milk we always put by her bed, and she was asleep." They gathered round him as if he formed their rallying point. He took Jennie and Gussie each by the hand. Gladys held his coat by the lapel. "You're not sorry, any of you, are you? She wanted to go; and she's gone in the sweetest of all ways." "She won't have to hear about Teddy," Gussie wept. "That's a comfort, anyhow." Gladys laid her head against Bob's breast. "No; but Teddy'll have to hear about her." Bob saw the opportunity. "No, Gladys; Teddy will not have to hear about her." He let this sink in. "Teddy—knows." It was some seconds before Jennie and Gussie released his hands and Gladys let go his lapel. When they did they moved away silently. Gussie dropped on her knees at the arm of a big chair, bowing her head, and crying quietly. Jennie, a slim figure with hands behind her back, walked down the length of the room, staring at the curtained window toward Indiana Avenue. Gladys stood off, looking at Bob, nodding her head sagely, as she said: "I thought that's what it meant when he didn't want us to come. He liked it better without saying good-by. So we all do." She gave a big, sudden sob, controlling herself as suddenly. "We're going to carry on, Bob. We're not going to show the white feather"—there was another big sob, with another successful effort to keep it back—"we're not going to show the white feather—any of us—just to please you." "Thank you, Gladys. It will please me. But there's something that pleases me more. I'd like to tell all three of you about it." Jennie turned round from the window, coming back down the room. She was pale, but she didn't cry. Gussie dried her eyes and was struggling to her feet when Bob laid his hand on her shoulder. "No, Gussie; stay where you are. I'll sit down here." He dropped into the chair. "You come on this side, Jennie. Gladys—" But Gladys had already crouched at his feet, while Jennie, balancing Gussie, sank beside the other arm of the chair. Pansy sprang up to her place on his knee. He told them about Teddy and his mother—about Teddy's vision and his own. "I don't say I know what to make of it. I'm not at all sure that we're obliged to explain that sort of thing unless we're scientists or psychologists. It seems to me that when beauty and comfort flash on us at a time of great need, we're at liberty to take them for what they seem to be, even if we don't understand them." As his hand lay on the arm of the chair, Jennie kissed it again and again. It was the first spontaneous affection she had ever shown him, and, though it moved him with a stirring strange and fundamental, he felt that with the awesome things so fresh in their minds, the time had not yet come to respond to it. It was one more impulse to gather force by being restrained a little longer. "It isn't as if this thing stood alone. A great many people have had experiences like it. They may be no more than fancy, just as some people say; but I do know this: that by what he saw Teddy was helped to do what he had to do, and that for me—" "Yes, Bob," Gladys pleaded. "What was it for you?" "Something real—and assuring—and beautiful—and comforting—and glorious." He uttered the words slowly, as if selecting his terms. "More than that," he went on, "it was something that's given me a happiness I can't describe but which I should like to share with you—which perhaps I shall be able to share with you—as we get to know one another better—and time goes on." The little snub-nosed face, something like Pansy's, was lifted to him adoringly. "Are we going to be your very own, Bob?" "Yes, Gladys, my very own." <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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