“It is dead now, child, the past,—­never to live again.  Grey holds a new life in her hands to-night.”  He stopped:  the words came weak, paltry, for his meaning.  “Is there nothing with which she dares to fill it? no touch that will make it dear, holy for her?”

There was a heavy silence.  Nature rose impatient in the crimson blood that dyed her lips and cheek, in the brilliance of her eye; but she forced back the words that would have come, and sat timid and trembling.

“None, Grey?  You are strong and cool.  I know.  The lie dead and gone from your life, you can control the years alone, with your religion and cheery strength.  Is that what you would say?”—­bitterly.

She did not answer.  The color began to fade, the eyes to dim.

“You have told me your story; let me tell you mine,”—­throwing himself on the grass beside her.  “Look at me, Grey.  Other women have despised me, as rough, callous, uncouth:  you never have.  I’ve had no hot-house usage in the world; the sun and rain hardly fell on me unpaid.  I’ve earned every inch of this flesh and muscle, worked for it as it grew; the knowledge that I have, scanty enough, but whatever thought I do have of God or life, I’ve had to grapple and struggle for.  Other men grow, inhale their being, like yonder tree God planted and watered.  I think sometimes He forgot me,”—­with a curious woman’s tremor in his voice, gone in an instant.  “I scrambled up like that scraggy parasite, without a root.  Do you know now why I am sharp, wary, suspicious, doubt if there be a God?  Grey,” turning fiercely, “I am tired of this.  God did make me.  I want rest.  I want love, peace, religion, in my life.”

She said nothing.  She forgot herself, her timid shyness now, and looked into his eyes, a noble, helpful woman, sounding the depths of the turbid soul laid bare for her.

He laid his big, ill-jointed hand on her knee.

“I thought,” he said.—­great drops of sweat coming out on his sallow lips,—­“God meant you to help me.  There is my life, little girl.  You may do what you will with it.  It does not value much to me.”

And Grey, woman-like, gathered up the despised hand and life, and sobbed a little as she pressed them to her heart.  An hour after, they went together up the old porch-steps, halting a moment where the grape-vines clustered thickest about the shingled wall.  The house was silent; even the village slept in the moonlight:  no sound of life in the great sweep of dusky hill and valley, save the wreaths of mist over the watercourses, foaming and drifting together silently:  before morning they would stretch from base to base of the hills like a Dead Sea, ashy and motionless.  They stood silent a moment, until the chirp of some robin, frightened by their steps in its nest overhead, had hummed drowsily down into sleep.

“It is not good-night, but good-bye, that I must bid you, Grey,” he said, stooping to see her face.