"Because—well, because Kenmore is my grave—must always be my grave. I'm dead. Good people, just people said I was dead. I am dead. Alive, I would be a menace, a curse. Dead, I am safe. I've paid my debt, and you, you, the people of my grave, since you do not know, have given me a chance, and I've been a friend among friends! Why, I've even come to a consciousness that—perhaps it is best for me to be dead, for back there, back among the living, the thing I once was might assert itself again."
The bitterness, the pitiful truthfulness, of Farwell's voice and words sank deep into Priscilla's heart. Out of them she instantly accepted one great, vital fact: he was in Kenmore as a refugee; he had been—had done—wrong! With the acceptance of this, a strange thing happened. Curiosity, even interest, departed. For no reason that she could have classified, Priscilla Glenn fiercely desired to—keep Farwell! If she knew what he seemed bent upon telling, he might take away her faith—her only support. She would keep and hold to what she believed him, what he had been since he came to the In-Place. It was childish, blind perhaps, but her words were those of a determined woman.
"Master Farwell, I will not listen to you. If you are dead, and are safe, dead, I will not look into the grave. All my life you have been good to me, been my only friend; you shall not take yourself from me! And I—please let me do this one little thing for you—let me prove that I can love and honour you without—explanation!"
Farwell's face twitched. He struggled to speak, and finally said unsteadily:
"I have been—good, as you say, because I had to be. At any moment I might have been what I once was. Why, girl, without knowing it, Kenmore—all of you—had it in your power to fling me to the dogs had you known, so you see——"
But Priscilla shook her head.
"You did not have to risk your life as you did for the McAdam boys. Perhaps you do not know how you have—grown in your grave, Master Farwell. Trust and liking come hard to us in Kenmore, yet not one of us doubts you. No, no, lie quiet. I do not want to see you as you remember yourself; you are better as you are. I will not hear; I will not have it in my thought when I am far away."
The hardness passed from Farwell's face. Something like relief replaced it, and he said slowly:
"My God! what a woman you will make if they do not harry you to death."
"They will not!" The white, tired face seemed illumined from within. "Last night made me so sure—of myself. It showed me how weak I was, and how strong. Do you know"—and here a flush, not of ignorance, but of strange understanding, struck across Priscilla's face like a flame—"women like my mother, all the women here in Kenmore, do not understand? They just let people take from them what no one has a right to take, what only they should give! It's when this something is taken that they become like my poor mother—afraid and crushed. If I live and die alone and lonely, I shall keep what is my own until I—I give it gladly and because I trust. I am not afraid! But if I had married Jerry-Jo because of—of—what he and my father thought, then I would have been lost, like my mother, don't you see? I—I can—live alone, but I will not be lost."