The moon was still obscured when he emerged, so that his face was hid. But before him there stretched, at last seen with clear eyes, the definite dreariness of a solitary life. Behind him he knew a woman lay prone upon a bare floor, sobbing and wrestling with the evil of her own nature, with hard-wrought hands half-outstretched to him—half-withdrawn, to cover her shamed eyes. Within his breast he bore the memory, not of rejection or of rebuke, but the echo of a plea for mercy—the broken syllables of a woman's voice raised in an appeal for help against her own weakness.
Nor had it been made in vain. For Homer Wilson, in the moment of that supreme temptation, had risen superior to himself—had put aside his own strength to help her weakness—had overcome his passion with his love. He had uttered a passionate word or two of comprehension, offered an incoherent pledge of aid—comfort—approval—and then, stumbling out of the door, hastened away, disregarding, for her sake, the cry of "Homer—Homer!" that seemed to follow him.
* * * * * *
Each of us has a wilderness and a temptation therein, although oft we pass through it, unrecking of the devils that attend us until they have stolen all they sought. Sometimes our wilderness is a perfumed garden, through which insidious devils dog our laggard footsteps. Sometimes it is a shaded pleasaunce, through which we tread with stately steps, unwitting of the derisive demons that smile as they mock our pageantry of pride. With retrospective agony, we turn to gaze upon the mirages of these scenes, as one views sunlit seas where wrecks have been, and cry aloud, "Here much precious treasure was lost!" But there are other wildernesses wherein we wander, consciously beset with Evil Spirits whose faces we know.
It was thus with Myron Holder. Her wilderness was indeed "a land of sand and thorns," thorns whose acrid sap was sucked from salt pools of tears. And the Spectre Demon that beset her there was the Devil of her own passion. By day it lingered round her steps, tempting her with suggestions of the Lethean draught its pleasures would bring, whispering to her how excusable she would be if she yielded to its allurements; for it did not fail to point out that she had no debt of kindness to repay with worthiness.
All day she fought against this Tempting One, who speedily enleagued all the other evils of her nature to aid him.
The battle raged fiercely, the bright light in her eyes, the flaming cheeks and trembling hands attesting the strife. One night, when the heat of summer made even the night winds sultry, when all nature was in the full height of its development, when the fields were deep in grass and the clover heavy with bloom—on such a night the door of a hop-clad cottage in Jamestown opened softly and closed as gently, and through the sleeping streets and out into the country a wild figure sped. She, for it was a woman, with flushed cheeks and loose-coiled hair, advanced a short distance along the highway, and then, swiftly climbing the fence, made her way diagonally across the fields of dew-drenched grass—across one field, another, and another—holding her slanting course as steadily and unswervingly as though she followed a beaten track.
As she ran, the spirit of the night and the intoxicating odor of flowers and grasses entered into her and steeped her senses in a delirium of freedom. She sprang on—now running, now half-dancing, once going a rod or two in the old childish "hippety-hop" fashion.
She reached the boundary of Deans' woodland, and plunged into its shadows with as little hesitation as she had entered the field of clover. She threaded the wood swiftly, her eyes fixed straight before her, never seeming to see the obstacles which opposed her path, although she avoided them unerringly.
Bats whose eyes have been pierced out exercise this same blind avoidance of obstacles, and it was only this woman's heart that had been wounded.