“I might, but I would love you all the same, Grey,”—­with a miserable attempt at a smile.  He took the hand, holding it in his a moment.  “Good bye,”—­all feeling frozen out of his voice.  “You’ve done right, Grey.  It will be better for us some day.  We’ll think of that,—­always.”

“You suffer.  I have made your life wretched,”—­clinging suddenly to him,

“No.”—­turning his head away.  “Never mind.  I am not a child, Grey.  Men do not die of grief.  They take up hard work, and that strengthens them.  And my little girl will be happy.  Her God will bless her; for she is a true, good girl.  Yes, true.  You judged rightly.”

For Blecker had taken up the alien Socialist dogma that day sincerely, but driven to it by passion:  now he swayed back to his old-fashioned faith in marriage, as one comes to solid land after a plunge in the upheaving surf.

“Good bye, Paul.”

The sunlight fell on their faces with a white brilliance, as they stood, their hands clasped, for a moment.  The girl never saw it afterwards without a sudden feeling of hate, as though it had jeered at her mortal pain.  Then Paul Blecker stood alone by the river-side, with only a dull sense that the day was bright and unfeeling, and that something was gone from the world, never to come back.  The life before he had known her offered itself to him again in a bare remembrance:  the heat to get on,—­the keen bargains,—­friendships with fellows that shook him off when they married, not caring that it hurt him,—­he, without a home or religion, keeping out of vice only from an inborn choice to be clean.  That was all.  Pah!  God help us!  What was this life worth, after all?  He glanced at the town, laid in ashes.  The war was foul indeed, yet in it there was room for high chivalric purpose.  Could he so end his life?  She would know it, and love him more that he died an honorable death.  Shame! and cowardly too!—­was there nothing worth finding in the world besides a woman’s love?—­he was no puling boy.  If there were, what was it—­for him?

He looked down at the dull sweep of the valley, heard the whistle of the train that was carrying her away, and saw the black trail of smoke against the sky,—­stood silently watching it until the last bit of smoke even had disappeared.  A woman would have worked off in tears or hysteric cries what pain came then; but the man only swallowed once or twice, lighted his cigar, and with a grim smile went down the road.

* * * * *

My story is nearly ended.  I have no time nor wish, these war-days, to study dramatic effects, or to shift large and cautiously painted scenes or the actors, for the mere tickling of your eyes and ears.  One or two facts in the history of these people are enough to give for my purpose:  they are for women,—­nervous, greedy, discontented women:  to learn from them (if I could put the truth into forcible enough English)