“Oh yes, oh yes!” Hoag rose, staring in a puzzled, thwarted sort of way. “I don't want to hinder you. I'll be goin'. I just thought I'd throw out a hint about the matter. It is well to be prepared for trouble if it has to come, an'—an' a man like Warren is sure to pick a row.”
Hoag lingered a moment, but seeing that the young man was at work he left the room.
CHAPTER XIII
THE following Sunday was a somber day for Paul Rundel. When he opened his eyes in the gray of dawn, and lay watching the pink flood of light as it widened and lengthened along the eastern horizon, his first thought was the despondent one under which he had dropped to sleep—it was the day Edward Peterson was to visit Ethel.
Paul rose and stood at the window and looked out over the lawn and frowsy brown roofs of the tannery sheds. He was cringing under a poignant agony that permeated his whole being, clogged the blood in his veins, and sucked away the very breath of the life which had recently been so full of indefinable content. The cause was not hard to find. He was convinced that Ethel was absolutely necessary to his happiness. Had he not met her again on his return to Georgia she might have remained in his memory only as the young girl who had been so unexpectedly kind and gentle to a poor outcast; but he had recently found himself more nearly on a social level with her, and he had actually helped her. She had said so. She had shown it in her words and actions, in her turning, under his guidance, from despair to hope. Yet she was to be another man's wife, a man who was evidently not disturbed by any fine-spun ideas of the Infinite or of duty to humanity. Peterson would forge ahead in the happy way such men have, surmounting obstacle after obstacle, climbing higher and higher in the estimation of men, and reaping honor after honor. Ethel would marry him. Her uncle wished it, all her friends counted on it. To refuse Peterson would be madness. The man—especially a poor man—who would ask her to do otherwise for his sake would be mad. Yes, all thought of her as anything but a sympathetic friend must be crushed. When Jeff Warren and his wife came to live in their sordid cabin on the roadside Ethel and her mother would pass their door daily and realize fully the caste to which Paul belonged.
He dressed himself and descended to the lawn. He raised his arms and lowered them, and inhaled deep breaths in his usual morning exercise; but it was done without zest and with the conviction that it would not be of benefit while such morbid thoughts ran rife within him. He must throw them off. He must face life as it was. He had suffered before. He must suffer again. After all, might he not hold Ethel in his heart as his ideal woman, even after she had become the wife of another? It must be—that was all that was left him—and yet, and yet—A sharp pain shot through him. His senses swam; the mocking rays of the rising sun flared upon him. Ethel another man's wife! Ethel the recipient of another man's caresses! Ethel the mother of another man's—
“O God, have mercy!” he moaned, and he turned down toward the gate, almost swaying as he moved across the grass.
“Are you going for a walk?” It was Ethel's cheery voice, and it came from the veranda. Glancing back he saw her lightly tripping down the steps.