Mary Heaton Vorse

“ By the next afternoon he was enough himself to let his gaze wander through the open window. Andrew felt as though he had come into a new chapter of his existence. He had passed through the gateway of pain, and at the other side he found himself in a far-off country where nothing whatsoever attached him to his old life. At that moment the girl passed his window, her splendid head held arrogantly. ”

“ Andrew's quick instinct for managing people, especially for managing women, made him silent. Quiet brooded between them. The breath of the mountains came in cool and sweet at the window. Once or twice her strange, penetrating gaze rested speculatively on Andrew, and then, after a long silence had fallen between them, and the gloom of the late afternoon, thickening, had stopped her sewing, she spoke:
"Oh, but the tones of your voice and the manner of you bring forgotten memories trooping along in great procession! ”

“ The most eloquent things that he wrote at this time were on shallowness and aridity, as though by force of contemplating these qualities philosophizing on them, brooding over them, watching them thwart and dwarf the generosities of men's spirits, he got to their very core, to their inner meaning as a devotee sees the mystic heart of the thing on which his loving contemplation turns. ”

“ Her awakening was so sweet, so very shy, so brimming with tenderness, so unaware, that a thousand times Andrew would have drawn her to his heart, but unflinchingly he followed the difficult path which he had marked out for himself the day when Althea had defied Victor with such magnificent scorn. ”

“ Then as Andrew recognized her as a separate personality, came the tramp of men's feet, and a dark, arrogant man, slouching, and yet at the same time carrying himself like one of the lords of the earth, came in, followed by a little, broad-shouldered, and bearded man. The dark man bent over him with the kindness one would show a woman, and with the air of one being familiar with wounded men. ”

“ He had meant to see if she would let him pay the price of his self-respect, and all at once he realized that that was forever impossible, that she had witnessed the judgment of the Thorntons, and that she found that judgment just, and with his insight into the hearts of women he knew that this knowledge had been, in the fair garden of her life, like some corroding thing, and that where the flowers of her spirit had bloomed there was nothing but a withering blackness. ”

“ Thornton next said. "Mother was a great reader as a girl, she has always said."
In some subtle way he dominated Andrew. At this difficult moment it was he who had the social graces and who was equal to the situation. Of the three it was Andrew alone who was embarrassed. Althea seemed hardly to have noticed her father's presence. She smiled at him, and then as though through the warmth of her smile she had done all that was expected of her, she dismissed him from her mind and sat quiet, her eyes fixed on the horizon. ”

“ Andrew, who added kindness to his intense curiosity regarding the hinterland of people's lives,—and it was this that gained him the reputation of being sympathetic, which he was not; but because women's mental processes really interested him, which among Americans is unusual,—made many friends among women. He was accustomed to having offered to him in friendship and sometimes in love very much more than he wanted; what he wanted was to observe and do his work, which was writing concerning the things he had observed. Had he brought more heart to his task he would have seen more. ”

“ It is n't himself that has been knocked out; it is his faith in himself that has been shaken, and somewhere in the fastnesses of his own nature he believes he can never win again.
It was Andrew Sears's fastidious habit to withdraw himself from his world when he felt the need of sweeping away some of life's unnecessary adornments; he decided that among the New England hills he would find that time for contemplation that life was forever taking from him. ”

“ They stood there, both of them helpless, waiting for each other to speak, and toward them strode Althea's grandmother. She came down on them like some terrible and avenging fate, erect as a pine-tree, as bleak as the bare mountains.
"I 've come for Althea," was all she said, and she put her arms about her shelteringly. "Come, Althea; come with me."
He had left her two hours ago, full of kindness for her, feeling toward her almost like a son, and her voice stung him like nothing else.
"I 've not hurt her!" he cried. "I never thought of hurting her. She 's none the worse for having known me." ”

“ Strangers don't often like us Thorntons. We 're so different, each one from ourselves; yet we are alike. Grandmother says in some way we are minted differently from the rest of the world, and we understand each other even when we hate each other. I was afraid you would feel it as they did."
"I don't feel as 'they' did, whoever 'they' were," Andrew assured her. "Let 's begin being friends, let 's begin 'way along, pretending it is so,—what we both felt,—that we have known each other very long. Let 's waste no time on the outskirts of friendship." ”

“ And so it happened that the work which he did from that time on was appreciation and criticism of other people's work, and scholarly enough; but insight for great criticism exists only when the great man's spirit is mirrored in the spirit of another man who is nearly his peer, and the mirror of Andrew Sears' spirit reflected only broken corners of larger minds. ”

“ In writing such things he achieved a shadow of the early promise of his own genius, for of necessity we must always and forever express in terms of art the things we know the best and have felt most deeply. ”

“ When he chose to reflect a man small enough for him to see him in his entirety, a flaw in the glass, which was his own hidden bitterness, gave back a contorted, ironic outline, as though, knowing too well the limitations of his own soul, he could see with fantastic accuracy the limitations of souls like his own. ”

“ Indeed, the splendor of their young beauty made Andrew feel as though he belonged to a physically inferior race, as though his body were meager and wholly inadequate in the face of their young splendor.
"What 's been the matter with you lately, Althea?" Victor demanded. "What 's made you be so mean to me?" Althea turned her level and disdainful gaze on him.
"I have n't liked the way you 've acted," she replied in an even tone. "I don't like sulky men, and you 've been sulky. How do you expect me to be nice to you? ”

“ Victor strode forward and seized Althea by the wrist, and even from where he lay Andrew could see the white circle where the blood was stopped by the iron of his grasp.
"I 'm not going to get angry with you," he said, the blood mounting to his dark face. "I 'm sorry for you, Althea; but let me tell you this, and you can tell him so, too,"—he nodded toward Andrew's direction,—"if any harm comes to you, I 'll kill him, that 's all."
"I love to hear you threaten," said Althea, with maddening smoothness. "I love to hear Thornton men so particular."
"Thornton men take what they feel like taking." ”

“ Andrew gathered from him that up still farther in the hills was a race of men who, instead of plowing and tilling as decent and comprehensible people did, had let their land run to timber and trapped in it irrespective of game laws, and kept out decent folk that wanted to hunt in the proper seasons. ”

“ I 've seen such men do such things for passion or for what they thought was love, but you 've known what you felt and you 've awakened in her a thirst for the kind of love she could never have, a thirst which forever you knew would be unfulfilled, a thirst for things that were to be forever denied her. ”

“ You 'll get over it. It will pass." At this she sprang from him, her pain-stricken eyes on him.
"Do you see that?" she cried, and her arm swept a great gesture across the horizon. "Do you know what that is full of to me—my love for you. And you say, 'You 'll get over it'! My God! I 'll get over it; we have to! Do you see the woman down the hill playing with a baby? Her little girl died last year. She 's got over it; that 's how I 'll get over it."
"Althea!" he pleaded, "Althea!" Again she looked at him with her somber gaze, and she then said with a slow and bitter wonder:
"You—you are n't. ”