Tillie cowered against the door, her eyes on his. Here before her,

embodied in this man, stood all that she had wanted and never had. He

meant a home, tenderness, children, perhaps. He turned away from the look

in her eyes and stared out of the front window.

"Them poplars out there ought to be taken away," he said heavily. "They're

hell on sewers."

Tillie found her voice at last:-"I couldn't do it, Mr. Schwitter. I guess I'm a coward. Maybe I'll be

sorry."

"Perhaps, if you got used to the idea--"

"What's that to do with the right and wrong of it?"

"Maybe I'm queer. It don't seem like wrongdoing to me. It seems to me

that the Lord would make an exception of us if He knew the circumstances.

Perhaps, after you get used to the idea--What I thought was like this.

I've got a little farm about seven miles from the city limits, and the

tenant on it says that nearly every Sunday somebody motors out from town

and wants a chicken-and-waffle supper. There ain't much in the nursery

business anymore. These landscape fellows buy their stuff direct, and the

middleman's out. I've got a good orchard, and there's a spring, so I could

put running water in the house. I'd be good to you, Tillie,--I swear it.

It'd be just the same as marriage. Nobody need know it."

"You'd know it. You wouldn't respect me."

"Don't a man respect a woman that's got courage enough to give up

everything for him?"

Tillie was crying softly into her apron. He put a work-hardened hand on

her head.

"It isn't as if I'd run around after women," he said. "You're the only

one, since Maggie--" He drew a long breath. "I'll give you time to think

it over. Suppose I stop in to-morrow morning. It doesn't commit you to

anything to talk it over."

There had been no passion in the interview, and there was none in the touch

of his hand. He was not young, and the tragic loneliness of approaching

old age confronted him. He was trying to solve his problem and Tillie's,

and what he had found was no solution, but a compromise.

"To-morrow morning, then," he said quietly, and went out the door.

All that hot August morning Tillie worked in a daze. Mrs. McKee watched

her and said nothing. She interpreted the girl's white face and set lips

as the result of having had to dismiss Schwitter again, and looked for time

to bring peace, as it had done before.




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