To be sure he was not entirely satisfying at the present moment. His attentions smacked too much of duty. He could not deceive Kathryn. He sent flowers and gifts in such profusion that they took on the aspect of blood money. Well, marriage would adjust all that.
Helen urged an early date for the wedding and even Manly, who did not like Kathryn, gripped her as the saviour of a critical situation.
King’s Forest had had a sinister effect upon Manly; it made him doubt himself.
And so life, apparently, ran along smoothly on the surface. It was the undercurrents that were really carrying things along at a terrific rate.
It was in his tower room that most of Northrup’s struggle went on. Daily he confronted that which Was and Had To Be! With all his old outposts being taken day by day, he was left bare and unprotected for the last assault. And it came!
It came as death does, quite naturally for the most part, and found him––ready. Like the dying––or the reborn––Northrup put his loved ones to the acid test. His mother would understand. Kathryn? It was staggering, at this heart-breaking moment, to discover, after all the recent proving of herself, that Kathryn resolved into an Unknown Quantity.
This discovery filled Northrup with a sense of disloyalty and unreality. What right had he to permit the girl who was to be his wife, the mother of his children, to be relegated to so ignominious a position? Had she not proved herself 234 to him in faithfulness and understanding? Had she not, setting aside her own rights, looked well to his?
The days dragged along and each one took its toll of Northrup’s vitality while it intensified that crusading emotion in his soul.
He did not mention all this to those nearest him until the time for departure came, and he tried, God knew, to work while he performed the small, devotional acts to his mother and Kathryn that would soon stand forth, to one of them at least, as the most courageous acts of his life.
He had come to that part of his book where his woman must take her final stand––the stand that Mary-Clare had so undermined. If he finished the book before he went––and he decided that it might be possible––his woman must rise supreme over the doubts with which she had been invested. But when he came to the point, the decision, if he followed his purpose, looked cheap and commonplace––above everything, obvious. In his present mood his book would be just––a book; not the Big Experience.