Rising, she said, “Let us each cast a pebble in the pool of this fountain and see whose circles will last longer.”
As they watched the rings widen, multiply and vanish until those made by her pebble had obliterated his, he said,
“There! Your spirit will trouble the waters of life to greater purpose than mine and longer. It needs no divination to tell that.”
When they went back to the house they met Westfield coming out. “Will she eventually throw herself away on him?” was the query Kendall put to himself.
At the breakfast table next morning Kendall’s chair was vacant, and the place was to know him no more under the sun.
CHAPTER III.
CONFIDENCES AND QUESTIONS.
“Too weak to change, though a mental hell
To me the rôle of clown;
A coward bound by a self-wrought spell,
I wait the sound of the prompter’s bell
Which rings the curtain down.”
Sunday’s restfulness was in the air. Miss Hill and Westfield sat in the shade of the great tree in the yard, with books and newspapers about them. Nothing was more delightful to Westfield than to hear her read aloud. She had a voice of great natural sweetness, with no artificial notes in it. In truth there was no artifice in her character.
The man beside her to-day was one of whom poor Kendall had often been bitterly jealous, a man of finer fibre than his rival, greater charm and graver defects. Older, he was also wiser, particularly in melancholy wisdom.
“Read me something,” he said, “some wild wail from a tortured poet. There are always plenty, and I like ’en, no matter how woful they are. God bless the poets every one, high and humble. They help us out in the dreary business of life.”