G. B. Lancaster

“ Liza—Liza—Lavel pushed open the door of the inner room, and crossed the sill. Franklin stood still; the passion in him shook him by waves, and his throat ached. Then it came to him like the blare of a trumpet that sin, honor, blood-brotherhood between man and man are nothing beside the love of a man for a woman. He had left her—but he had come back. It was Lavel speaking behind the half-closed door, but Franklin heard only the answer. ”

“ At earliest hearing Franklin had hated this unknown girl who was to break the tie between them.
In learning more he began to fear her. Liza was bred in the town, and nursed on the talk of the dressmaking rooms at a big shop. Lavel was bred in the back-country, and had taken his teaching from men in bush-town ships, and on the roads. The very trick-words of lip and brain which foreshadow the whole must of necessity be separate languages in the man and the woman. ”

“ It tried her severely; and the long evenings that closed the hard days were cruelly dull, with Lavel falling asleep over his pipe, and the clucking wind arguing through the door-latch with the busy clock on the mantel-shelf. ”