Burned Bridges

But he found it did make a difference, a profoundly disturbing

difference. He had grown insulated against the memory of Sophie Carr

tugging at his heartstrings as the magnetic north pulls on the compass

needle. He had grown free of both thought and hope of her. There had

been too many other vital things pressing upon him these months of

adventure in toil, too many undeniable, everyday factors of living

present at every turn, hourly insistent upon being coped with, for him

to nurse old sad dreams and longings. So he had come at last to think of

that passionate yearning as a disease which had run its course.

Now, to his dismay, it recurred in all its old virulence, at a mere

glimpse of Sophie. The floodgates of memory loosed bitter waters upon

him, to make his heart heavy and spoil his days of passive content. It

angered him to be so hopelessly troubled. But he could not gainsay the

fact.

It made San Francisco a dreary waste. Try as he would he could not keep

Sophie Carr from being the sun around which the lesser nebulæ of his

thought continually revolved. He could no more help a wistful lookout

for her upon San Francisco's streets than he could help breathing. Upon

the rolling phalanxes of motor cars his gaze would turn with watchful

expectation, and he took to scanning the faces of the passing thousands,

a lonely, shy man with a queer glow in his eyes. That, of course, was

only in moments of forgetfulness. Then he would pull himself together

with a resentful irritation and tax himself with being a weak fool and

stalk along about his business.

But his business had lost its savor, just as his soul had lost its

slowly-won serenity. His business had no importance to any save himself.

It had been merely to winter decently and economically with an eye

cocked for such opportunities of self-betterment as came his way, and

failing material opportunity in this Bagdad of the Pacific coast to make

the most of his enforced idleness.

And now the magic of the colorful city had departed along with the magic

of the books. The downtown streets ceased to be a wonderful human

panorama which he loved to watch. The hushed reading room where he had

passed so many contented hours was haunted by a presence that obscured

the printed page. He would find himself staring absently at an open

book, the words blurred and overlaid with mental pictures of Lone Moose,

of Sophie sitting on the creek bank, of his unfinished church, forlorn

and gaunt in the winter snows and the summer silences, of Tommy Ashe

trudging across the meadow, gun in hand, of old Sam Carr in his

moosehide chair, of the Indians, the forest, of all that goes to make

the northern wilderness--and of himself moving through it all, an

unheroic figure, a man who had failed in his work, in his love, in

everything.