Jeff Campbell sat very still and dark, and made no answer.

“Seems to me, Jeff you might be good to me a little to-night when my head hurts so, and I am so tired with all the hard work I have been doing, thinking, and I always got so many things to be a trouble to me, living like I do with nobody ever who can help me.  Seems to me you might be good to me Jeff to-night, and not get angry, every little thing I am ever saying to you.”

“I certainly would not get angry ever with you, Melanctha, just because you say things to me.  But now I certainly been thinking you really mean what you have been just then saying to me.”  “But you say all the time to me Jeff, you ain’t no ways good enough in your loving to me, you certainly say to me all the time you ain’t no ways good or understanding to me.”  “That certainly is what I say to you always, just the way I feel it to you Melanctha always, and I got it right in me to say it, and I have got a right in me to be very strong and feel it, and to be always sure to believe it, but it ain’t right for you Melanctha to feel it.  When you feel it so Melanctha, it does certainly make everything all wrong with our loving.  It makes it so I certainly never can bear to have it.”

They sat there then a long time by the fire, very silent, and not loving, and never looking to each other for it.  Melanctha was moving and twitching herself and very nervous with it.  Jeff was heavy and sullen and dark and very serious in it.

“Oh why can’t you forget I said it to you Jeff now, and I certainly am so tired, and my head and all now with it.”

Jeff stirred, “All right Melanctha, don’t you go make yourself sick now in your head, feeling so bad with it,” and Jeff made himself do it, and he was a patient doctor again now with Melanctha when he felt her really having her head hurt with it.  “It’s all right now Melanctha darling, sure it is now I tell you.  You just lie down now a little, dear one, and I sit here by the fire and just read awhile and just watch with you so I will be here ready, if you need me to give you something to help you resting.”  And then Jeff was a good doctor to her, and very sweet and tender with her, and Melanctha loved him to be there to help her, and then Melanctha fell asleep a little, and Jeff waited there beside her until he saw she was really sleeping, and then he went back and sat down by the fire.

And Jeff tried to begin again with his thinking, and he could not make it come clear to himself, with all his thinking, and he felt everything all thick and heavy and bad, now inside him, everything that he could not understand right, with all the hard work he made, with his thinking.  And then he moved himself a little, and took a book to forget his thinking, and then as always, he loved it when he was reading, and then very soon he was deep in his reading, and so he forgot now for a little while that he never could seem to be very understanding.