“Perhaps not,” said he, as if he had but a passing and shallow interest in the subject.
Sitting there bareheaded to the wind, which was dropping down coldly from the far mountains, he seemed to be in a brooding humor.
“The moon is late tonight,” he noted. “Shall we wait till it rises?”
“Yes,” she answered, feeling the great gentleness that there was about him when he was in a serious way.
Why he had not been successful in the profession for which nature plainly had designed him she could not understand; for he was a man to inspire confidence when he was at his best, and unvexed by the memory of the bitter waters which had passed his lips. She felt that there would be immeasurable solace in his hand for one who suffered; she knew that he would put down all that he had in life for a friend.
Leaning her chin upon her palm, she looked at him in the last light of the west, which came down to them dimly, as if falling through dun water, from some high-floating clouds. As if following in her thought something that had gone before, she said: 99
“No; perhaps you should not stay in this big, empty country when there are crowded places in the world that are full of pain, and little children in them dying for the want of such men as you.”
He started and turned toward her, putting out his hand as if to place it upon her head.
“How did you know that it’s the children that give me the strongest call back to the struggle?” he asked.
“It’s in your eyes,” said she. And beneath her breath she added: “In your heart.”