'"Yes, Cynthy,—now and always."
'She looked from me to Dick an’ back to me again. In her face I saw she was uncertain.
'"Why didn’t you tell me before?" she cried out sharply. "Why didn’t—you—teach me? O Seth, he needs me most!"
'Dick’s eyes and mine met and clashed again like steel on steel. But it was mine that fell at last.
'We all went back to the house together without saying any more.
'It come to me just like this. Dick was tangled in his feelings, and the feelings are the strongest cords that ever bind a boy like him. Cynthy was drawn to him, because to her Dick was a thing of splendor and it was so wonderful he needed her! I needn’t tell you what it was tied me. I still had a fighting chance to get her away from him, but was it fair of me to make the fight?
'Every drop of blood in my body said, Yes! Every cell in my brain said, No! For, you see, life had us in a net—but I was the strong one and I could break the net.
'I went off and walked by myself. Sundown come, and milking-time, and supper. But I forgot to eat or work. I walked.
'No man can tell you what he thinks and feels in hours like them. There ain’t no words for the awful hopes or the black despairs or the gleams that begin like lightning-flashes and grow to something like the breaking dawn. I couldn’t get away from it anyhow I turned. It wasn’t a situation I dared leave alone, not with Dick at white heat and Cynthy so confident of herself and so pitiful. It wasn’t safe to let things be. I must snatch her from him or give her to him.—It was my turn now to cry out, O my God!
''T was long after dark when I come back. My mind was made up. They should have each other. I’d do what I could to make the thing easy. "After all," I told myself, "you ain’t completely stripped. Don’t think it! You have the other thing. You can carry the torch. You can bring down the flame. Folks will thank you yet for the sacred fire!"