all myself for all our loving one another.  And if its anything anyway that ever hurts you, you act like as if it was me made you just begin it all with me.  I ain’t no coward, you hear me, Melanctha?  I never put my trouble back on anybody, thinking that they made me.  I certainly am right ready always, Melanctha, you certainly had ought to know me, to stand all my own trouble for me, but I tell you straight now, the way I think it Melanctha, I ain’t going to be as if I was the reason why you wanted to be loving, and to be suffering so now with me.”  “But ain’t you certainly ought to be feeling it so, to be right, Jeff Campbell.  Did I ever do anything but just let you do everything you wanted to me.  Did I ever try to make you be loving to me.  Did I ever do nothing except just sit there ready to endure your loving with me.  But I certainly never, Jeff Campbell, did make any kind of way as if I wanted really to be having you for me.”

Jeff stared at Melanctha.  “So that’s the way you say it when you are thinking right about it all, Melanctha.  Well I certainly ain’t got a word to say ever to you any more, Melanctha, if that’s the way its straight out to you now, Melanctha.”  And Jeff almost laughed out to her, and he turned to take his hat and coat, and go away now forever from her.

Melanctha dropped her head on her arms, and she trembled all over and inside her.  Jeff stopped a little and looked very sadly at her.  Jeff could not so quickly make it right for himself, to leave her.

“Oh, I certainly shall go crazy now, I certainly know that,” Melanctha moaned as she sat there, all fallen and miserable and weak together.

Jeff came and took her in his arms, and held her.  Jeff was very good then to her, but they neither of them felt inside all right, as they once did, to be together.

From now on, Jeff had real torment in him.

Was it true what Melanctha had said that night to him?  Was it true that he was the one had made all this trouble for them?  Was it true, he was the only one, who always had had wrong ways in him?  Waking or sleeping Jeff now always had this torment going on inside him.

Jeff did not know now any more, what to feel within him.  He did not know how to begin thinking out this trouble that must always now be bad inside him.  He just felt a confused struggle and resentment always in him, a knowing, no, Melanctha was not right in what she had said that night to him, and then a feeling, perhaps he always had been wrong in the way he never could be understanding.  And then would come strong to him, a sense of the deep sweetness in Melanctha’s loving and a hating the cold slow way he always had to feel things in him.

Always Jeff knew, sure, Melanctha was wrong in what she had said that night to him, but always Melanctha had had deep feeling with him, always he was poor and slow in the only way he knew how to have any feeling.  Jeff knew Melanctha was wrong, and yet he always had a deep doubt in him.  What could he know, who had such slow feeling in him?  What could he ever know, who always had to find his way with just thinking.  What could he know, who had to be taught such a long time to learn about what was really loving?  Jeff now always had this torment in him.