A slight bit of temper rose in a flush to my cheeks, as I watched Caroline Lellyett sit on the steps and feed cake to one twin and two stair-steps with as much hunger in her eyes for them as there was in theirs for the cake.  Lee Greenfield is the responsible party in this case, and she has been loving him hopelessly for fifteen years.  Lots of other folks wanted to marry her, but Lee has pinned her in the psychic spot and is watching her flutter.

Polk departed in the trail of Nell Kirkland’s fluffy muslin skirts, smoldering dangerously, I felt.  Nell has grown up into a most lovely individual, and I felt uneasy about her under Folk’s ministrations.  Her eyes follow him rather persistently.  On the whole, I am glad Jane committed me to this woman’s cause.  I’ll have to begin to exercise the biceps of Nell’s heart—­as soon as I get some strength into my own.

And after they had all gone, I sat for an hour out on the front steps of my big, empty old house, and enjoyed my own loneliness, if it could be called enjoying.  I could hear the Petunia’s happy giggle, answering Jasper’s guttural pleasantries, out on the cabin porch behind the row of lilac bushes.  I do hope that Petunia gets much and the right sort of courting during this week that Jasper has allowed her!

With the last rays of the sun, I had found time to read a long, dear letter from Richard Hall, and though I had transferred it from my pocket to my desk, while I dressed for the afternoon, its crackle was still in my mind.  I wondered what it all meant, this dissatisfied longing that human beings send out across time and distance, one to and for another.

If a woman’s heart were really like a great big golden chalice, full to the brim with the kind of love she is taught God wants her to have in it for all mankind, both men and women, why shouldn’t she offer drafts of it to every one who is thirsty, brothers as well as sisters?  I wonder how that would solve Jane’s problem of emotional equality!  I do love Dicky—­and—­and I do love Polk—­with an inclination to dodge.  Now, if there were enough of the right sort of love in me, I ought to be able to get them to see it, and drink it for their comforting, and have no trouble at all with them about their wanting to seize the cup, drain all the love there is in it, shut it away from the rest of the world—­and then neglect it.

Yes, why can’t I love Polk as I love you, Jane, and have him enjoy it?  Yes, why?

I think if I had Dicky off to myself for a long time, and very gently led him up to the question of loving him hard in this new way, he might be induced to sip out of the cup just to see if he liked it—­and it might be just what he craved, for the time being; but I doubt it.  He would storm and bluster at the idea.

Of course the Crag would let a woman love him in any old kind of new or experimental way she wanted to, if it made her happy.  He would take her cup of tenderness and drink it as if it were sacramental wine, on his knees.  But he doesn’t count.  He has to be man to so many people that there is danger of his becoming a kind of superman.  Think of the old Mossback being a progressive thing like that!  I laughed out loud at the idea—­but the echo was dismal.