"She has the house furnishings," Paul sullenly answered. "That leaves her a sight better off than she was before she knew me."
Rising, the artist walked over to the window. "The river is rising," he said, when he could trust himself to speak. "Another foot, and away goes the bridge. When do you go to the mine?"
"Tomorrow."
"Mrs. Steiner goes with you?"
"No, too wet."
Bachelder hesitated. "I'd offer you my quarters, but—you see I am neither married nor unmarried."
"No!" Paul agreed with ponderous respectability. "It would never do. Besides, I've hired a house of the Jefe-Politico; the one that crowns the Promontory. When the rain slacks we'll move out to the mine."
"There is one thing I should like," he added as he rose to go. "If you would have a stone put over the child's grave—something nice—you're a better judge than me,—I'll——"
"Too late," the artist interrupted. "Andrea broke up her necklace; put savings of eighteen generations into the finest tomb in the cemetery." He looked curiously at Paul, but his was that small order of mind which persistently fixes responsibility for the most inevitable calamity upon some person. To the day of his death he would go on taxing the child's death against Andrea; he did not even comment on this last proof of her devoted love.
After he was gone, Bachelder returned to his window, just in time to see the bridge go. A thin stream in summer, meandering aimlessly between wide banks, the river now ran a full half-mile wide, splitting the town with its yeasty race. An annual occurrence, this was a matter of small moment to the severed halves. Each would pursue the even tenor of its way till the slack of the rains permitted communication by canoe and the rebuilding of the bridge. But it had special significance now in that Andrea lived on the other bank.