"Old Jim—it hurts such a lot?"
He jerked away from her outstretched hand. "Hurt? A fellow can stand being hurt. It can't hurt more than feeling her chained to me. But if she goes—what does she go to?"
Ah—that was it! Through the scorch and cloud of his own suffering he had seen it, it was the centre of his pain. Nona glanced down absently at her slim young hands—so helpless and inexperienced looking. All these tangled cross-threads of life, inextricably and fatally interwoven; how were a girl's hands to unravel them?
"I suppose she's talked to you—told you her ideas?" he asked.
Nona nodded.
"Well, what's to be done: can you tell me?"
"She mustn't go—we mustn't let her."
"But if she stays—stays hating me?"
"Oh, Jim, not hating—!"
"You know well enough that she gets to hate anything that doesn't amuse her."