Having thus received a sad jolt through the medium of his affections,

Mr. Thompson, like countless numbers of human beings before him, set

about gathering himself together. He did a tremendous lot of thinking

about things in general, about himself and Sophie Carr in particular.

Moping in that isolated cabin his mind took on a sort of abnormal

activity. He could not even stop thinking when he wanted to stop. He

would lie awake in the silent darkness long after he should have been

asleep, going over his narrow and uneventful existence, the unwelcome

and anguished present, the future that was nothing but a series of blank

pages which he had yet to turn in God only knew what bitterness and

sorrow. That was the way he gloomily put it to himself. He had still to

learn what an adaptable, resilient organism man is. This, his first

tentative brush with life, with the realities of pain and passion, had

left him exceedingly cast down, more than a little inclined to

pessimism.

He experienced gusts of unreasoning anger at Sophie Carr, forgetting, as

a man wounded in his egotism and disappointed in his first passionate

yearning for a mate is likely to forget, that he had brought it on

himself, that Sophie had not encouraged him, nor lured him to his

undoing, nor given him aught to nourish the illusion that she was his

for the asking.

Sometimes he would have a vivid flash of jealousy when he thought about

her and Tommy Ashe, when he recalled her admissions. And he would soften

from that mood, twisting his lips wryly, when he remembered the pitying

tenderness of her good-by.

He could not in the least understand the girl nor her motives, any more

than he could understand the transformation that he felt vaguely was

taking place in himself. She was too wise for her years and her

experience. There was a stinging truth in some of the things she said.

And it was his fault, not hers, that they were unpalatable truths. What

did a man like himself have to offer a girl like her? Nothing. She had

his measure in everything but sheer brute strength, most of all in the

stoutness of her resolution. For Mr. Thompson, pondering soberly,

realized that if he gave free play to the feelings Sophie Carr had

stirred up in him, there was no folly he was not capable of committing.

He, whose official creed it was to expound self-denial, would have

followed his impulses blindly. He would have married out of hand.

And after that, what?

He could not see clearly, when he tried to see. He was no longer filled

with the sublime faith that a beneficent Providence kept watch and ward

over him, and all men. He was in fact now almost of the opinion that

both sparrows and preachers might fall and the Great Intelligence

remain unperturbed. It seemed necessary that a man should do more than

have faith. He must imperatively make some conscious, intelligent effort

on his own behalf. He was especially of this opinion since the Board of

Home Missions had overlooked the matter of forwarding his quarterly

salary on time. The faith that moveth mountains was powerless to conjure

flour and sugar and tea out of those dusky woods and silent

waterways--at least not without a canoe and labor and a certain

requisite medium of exchange.




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