Always now Jeff wondered did Melanctha love him.  Always now he was wondering, was Melanctha right when she said, it was he had made all their beginning.  Was Melanctha right when she said, it was he had the real responsibility for all the trouble they had and still were having now between them.  If she was right, what a brute he always had been in his acting.  If she was right, how good she had been to endure the pain he had made so bad so often for her.  But no, surely she had made herself to bear it, for her own sake, not for his to make him happy.  Surely he was not so twisted in all his long thinking.  Surely he could remember right what it was had happened every day in their long loving.  Surely he was not so poor a coward as Melanctha always seemed to be thinking.  Surely, surely, and then the torment would get worse every minute in him.

One night Jeff Campbell was lying in his bed with his thinking, and night after night now he could not do any sleeping for his thinking.  Tonight suddenly he sat up in his bed, and it all came clear to him, and he pounded his pillow with his fist, and he almost shouted out alone there to him, “I ain’t a brute the way Melanctha has been saying.  Its all wrong the way I been worried thinking.  We did begin fair, each not for the other but for ourselves, what we were wanting.  Melanctha Herbert did it just like I did it, because she liked it bad enough to want to stand it.  It’s all wrong in me to think it any way except the way we really did it.  I certainly don’t know now whether she is now real and true in her loving.  I ain’t got any way ever to find out if she is real and true now always to me.  All I know is I didn’t ever make her to begin to be with me.  Melanctha has got to stand for her own trouble, just like I got to stand for my own trouble.  Each man has got to do it for himself when he is in real trouble.  Melanctha, she certainly don’t remember right when she says I made her begin and then I made her trouble.  No by God, I ain’t no coward nor a brute either ever to her.  I been the way I felt it honest, and that certainly is all about it now between us, and everybody always has just got to stand for their own trouble.  I certainly am right this time the way I see it.”  And Jeff lay down now, at last in comfort, and he slept, and he was free from his long doubting torment.

“You know Melanctha,” Jeff Campbell began, the next time he was alone to talk a long time to Melanctha.  “You know Melanctha, sometimes I think a whole lot about what you like to say so much about being game and never doing any hollering.  Seems to me Melanctha, I certainly don’t understand right what you mean by not hollering.  Seems to me it certainly ain’t only what comes right away when one is hit, that counts to be brave to be bearing, but all that comes later from your getting sick from the shock of being hurt once in a fight, and all that, and all the being taken care of for years after, and the suffering of your family, and