“You are writing stories, then—­still?” he asked, lingering in the face of her evident desire to be rid of him.

“Oh, yes, I write all the time—­every day.”

“But do you find a market for so many?”

She shook her head:  “The beginning is always hard—­have you never read the lives of the poets?  But when one gives up everything else—­when one has devoted one’s whole life—­”

Knowing what he did of her mistaken ambition, her fruitless sacrifices, the thing appeared to him as a terrible and useless tragedy.  He saw the thinness of her figure, the faint lines which her tireless purpose had written upon her face—­and he felt that it was on the tip of his tongue to beg her to give it up—­to reason with her in the tone of a philosopher and with the experience of the author of an accepted play.  But presently when he spoke, he found that his uttered words were not of the high and ethical character he had planned.

“She will be very much disappointed, I know,” he said at last; and though he told himself that a great deal of good might be done by a little perfectly plain speaking, still he did not know how to speak it nor exactly what it would be.

“Thank her for me—­I—­I should love to see her oftener if I had the time—­if it were possible,” said Christina.  And then he went to the door because he could think of no excuse sufficient to keep him standing another minute upon the hearthrug.

“I hope you will remember,” he said from the threshold, “that we are always down stairs—­at least my mother is—­and ready to serve you at any moment in any way we can.”

The assurance appeared to make little impression upon her, but she smiled politely, and then closing the door after him, sat down to eat her dinner of cold bread and corned meat.

CHAPTER IV

TREATS OF THE ATTRACTION OF OPPOSITES

As soon as Trent had left the room Laura felt that the silence became oppressive and constrained.  For the first time in her life she found herself overwhelmed with timidity—­with a fear of the too obvious word—­and this timidity annoyed her because she was aware that she no longer possessed the strength with which to struggle against it.  That it was imperative for her to lighten the situation by a trivial remark, she saw clearly, yet she could think of nothing to say which did not sound foolish and even insincere when she repeated it in her thoughts.  Had she dared to follow her usual impulse and be uncompromisingly honest, she would have said, perhaps:  “I am silent because I am afraid to speak and yet I do not know why I am afraid, nor what it is that I fear.”  In her own mind she was hardly more lucid than this, and the mystery of her heart was as inscrutable to herself as it was to Kemper.