“But that’s absurd,” the girl declared.  “Because I have got that feeling for Tommy Ashe, and therefore I can’t imagine myself in any other state.  I can’t look at it the cold-blooded way you do, Daddy dear.”

“I’m stating a hypothetical case,” Carr went on patiently.  “You do now.  We’ll take that for granted.  Would you still have anything fundamental in common with Tommy with that part left out?  Suppose you got so you didn’t care whether he kissed you or not?  Suppose it were no longer a physical pleasure just to be near him.  Would you enjoy his daily and hourly presence then, in the most intimate relation a man and a woman can hold to each other?”

“Why, I wouldn’t live with him at all,” the girl said positively.  “I simply couldn’t.  I know.”

“You might have to,” Carr answered gently.  “You have never yet run foul of circumstances over which you have no more power than man has over the run of the tides.  But we’ll let that pass.  I’m trying to help you, Sophie, not to discourage you.  There are some situations in which, and some natures to whom, half a loaf is worse than no bread.  Do you feel, have you ever for an hour felt that you simply couldn’t face an existence in which Tommy Ashe had no part?”

Sophie put her arm around his neck, and her fingers played a tattoo on his shoulder.

“No,” she said at last.  “I can’t honestly say that I’ve ever been overwhelmed with a feeling like that.”

“Well, there you are,” Carr observed dryly.  “Between the propositions I think you’ve answered your own question.”

The girl’s breast heaved a little and her breath went out in a fluttering sigh.

“Yes,” she said gravely.  “I suppose that is so.”

They sat silent for an interval.  Then something wet and warm dropped on Carr’s hand.  He looked up quickly.

“Does it hurt?” he said softly.  “I’m sorry.”

“So am I,” she whispered.  “But chiefly, I think, I am sorry for Tommy. He’d be perfectly happy with me.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Carr replied.  “But you wouldn’t be happy with him, only for a brief time, Sophie.  Tommy’s a good boy, but it will take a good deal of a man to fill your life.  You’d outgrow Tommy.  And you’d hurt him worse in the end.”

She ran her soft hand over Carr’s grizzled hair with a caressing touch.  Then she got up and walked away into the house.  Carr turned his gaze again to the meadow and the green woods beyond.  For ten minutes he sat, his posture one of peculiar tensity, his eyes on the distance unseeingly—­or as if he saw something vague and far-off that troubled him.  Then he gave his shoulders a quick impatient twitch, and taking up his book began once more to read.

CHAPTER II

THE MAN AND HIS MISSION