"How long do you think that little thing has been there?"
Mrs. Ledyard thought about two years. "It's so cunning; it's planted itself. I haven't had the heart to have it taken out."
"When it is a big tree," said Shipman slowly, "and when his bones are brittle and when only images of sin and failure and disease are graven on his soul, Terence O'Brien will be called 'free.'"
"Free," she murmured; her eyes, fixed on her friend's, read anew that greatest and deepest thing in him, the passion for humanity.
She saw him fighting for a boy as she had seen him fight for her own husband; saw his stern face and iron gray head raised in its superb appeal to the pity and understanding of the so-called "good" who control the so-called "bad." Something surged up in the woman, a deep something that was a triumph and a shame. "I could make this man happy," her soul said. "I could make him happy!" Then into the strange quietude of a wife's memory, she withdrew even as she gave him her hand and eyes. She was a cold statue, a gracious being, a woman who had known.
Pudge ran up. "Mother," the little blue figure shouted, "I've caught a butterfly. He wiggles his wings; he doesn't like it; he wants to get away."
The man and woman smiled. They showed Pudge the meaning of wings, the reason things want to get away and in showing, they were tender of each other. When the little orange and black fans again wavered against the great wall, the blue vast of the morning sky, Pudge himself got the sense of your true liberator!
"My, I like to let him go!" he breathed. He gazed a little wistfully after his silken-fanned treasure, insisting stoutly, "I like to let him go!" Pudge looked earnestly up into the two faces, smiling at him. "I want everything to go free," said Pudge, "except guinea pigs!"
Watts waited a moment; then he took Eleanor's hand in both of his. He waited until she lifted her eyes to him. "I shall not come again," he said very gently, "until—you send for me."