"She was different from the others. I thought then it was because of the rough setting. I know now that it wasn't. She is the same here that she was out there. I can't see anything in any other woman; I don't want to see anything in any other woman. I couldn't make her out; it puzzled me that I could do nothing with her. After school hours—she was the schoolmistress, you know, sir—we rode far up into the mountains. She got to be a habit with me; then a fever. I didn't know what was the matter except that I was sick because of the need of her. I didn't think of marriage then. She was nothing. Her father kept a store in Abilene, Kansas. I thought of you. All my inherited instincts, my sense of class distinction, of which we people in New York make such a fetich, were revolted. But I loved her, and I told her so."
Cortland sat up, then leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and followed his father's gaze into the fire.
"She was too clean to understand me, sir. I knew it almost before I had spoken. In her eyes there dawned the horror, the fear, the self-pity which could not be said in words. Then Jeff Wray came in and I left her—left Mesa City. There was—nothing else—to do."
His voice, which had sunk to a lower key, halted and then was silent. A chiming clock in the hallway struck the hour; other clocks in dainty echo followed in different parts of the house; an automobile outside hooted derisively; but for a long while the two men sat, each busied with a thread of memory which the young man had unreeled from the spool of life. In the midst of his thoughts Cort heard a voice at his elbow, the voice of an old man, tremulous and uncertain, a softer voice than his father's.
"It is strange—very, very strange!"
"What is strange, sir?"
Cornelius Bent passed his fingers before his eyes quickly and straightened in his chair.
"Your story. It's strange. You know, Cort, I, too, once loved a woman like that—the way you do. It's an old romance—before your mother, Cort. Nobody knows—nobody in the East ever knew—even Caroline——"
He stopped speaking as though he had already said too much, got up slowly and walked the length of the room, while Cortland watched him, conscious again of the sudden unusual sense of conciliation in them both. At the other end of the room the General stood a moment, his hands behind his back, his gaze upon the floor.
"I am sorry, Cort," he said with sudden harshness. And then, after a pause, "You must not see Mrs. Wray again."