The Hollow Land

ls, was in his car and running past the gate of Home Dunes on his way back to town when Rachael stopped him. She looked her composed and dignified self in her str

of his car, and opening the letter before him. "This cam

e, then raised questioning eyes to he

k?" Rachael quest

think," said George. "Do y

er the warming leaves of the maples into a far vi

. You can see that Bill

agreed. "At least, we can find

ho understands anything of the whole miserabl

y. "This is the deuce of a thing!" he said. "If she didn't care for him any more than that, what's

ough," Rachael said l

n alarmed glance,

sank, her eyes, brooding and sombre, were far away. "But I watched it burning, George," she said in a low, absent tone, "and I saw his handwr

f nothing to say. He looked about helplessly, buttoned a glove button briskly,

ith resolute courage returning to her manner and voice

t--of course it will make an immense difference," he added, i

el wa

g remains--a fact. Of course this ends, in one way, the sordid side, the fear of publicity, of noto

st unbelievable relief! We all know that. He's not the first man who let a pretty face drive him crazy when he was working himself

ith a mildness that George found infinitely

aid after a pause. "That's the first thing to do. A

clock, and the boys home at half-past ten, thinking it is almost sundown. They only go as far as the cove, where the men are working, and we can see t

ardiner had indeed been issued a week before, and that Magsie was not to be found at her apartment, which was to be sublet at the janitor's discretion; that Bowman's secretary reported the absence of Miss Clay from the city, and the uncertainty of her appearing in any of Mr. Bowman's productions that winter, and that at the hospital a confident inq

proud voice, faintly echoed from Clark's Hills. "

d the efficient G

! And what

ually, he'll

HINK so?

nyway, w

said Mrs. Valentine, fi

ca the day George's cable reached him there was no need to say. That he was a man almost sick with empty days and brooding nights there was no need

ly that; his eyes had a tired and haunted look that George found sad to see, his voice had lost its old confi

had the whole crowd down as far as Shark Light for a picnic last Sunday. Rachael has little Breck Pickering down there now; he's a ni

e her--to take him in. I wish I had been there--Sunday

at the floor, his whole figure, George tho

ed, at least," said G

presently he roused himself. "I've come back to work, George," he said with a quiet decision of manner that George found new and admirable. "That's all I can do now. If she ever forgives me--but she's not the kind that forgives.

hought him perfect, as so much of the world thought him; to George, Warren had always been a little more than perfect, a machine of inspired surgery, underbalanced in many ways that in this one supreme way he might be more than human. George had to struggle for what he achieved; Warren achieved by divine right. The women

ay, and he was telling me yesterday that he didn't see himself breaking out of it. Mrs. Huds

e it. I'm going to spend this afternoon getting things into shape at the house, and I

ch?" George aske

l save my reason, I think," Warren answ

George who did the talking now. They talked of cases chiefly, for Warren was working day and night, and thought of little else than his w

ding stars. Warren had commenced an operation just before midnight, it was only concluded now, and George, who had remained beside him for

go home in those first years, and creep into bed, she was never too sleepy to rouse and ask me how the case went, she never fail

not speak. They walked an ec

t anything else--our sons, our fireside, our interests together. I've heard her voice ever since. And I'm changed, George, not in what I always believed, because I know

either side to end the silence for a long time. The city streets w

"I believe that she needs you as much

at!" Warren said e

the muck during the last few years," Geo

!" Warren answ

world, hers was. But to have you come back at her, to have Magsie Clay break in on her, and begin to yap breezily

ening his pace, as if to walk away

eared in his own heart that nothing would ever bring about a change in her feeling, or rather, that the change th

er heart grow hot and bitter within her at the memory of her wrongs, she resolutely fought for composure; no matter now what he had been or done, that life was dead. She had her boys, the sunsets and sunrises, the mellowing beauty of the year. She had her books, and above all her memories. And in these memories she found much to blame in herself, but much to pity, too. A rudderless little bark, s

tness to be the father of her children. She had laughed at self-sacrifice, laughed at endurance, laughed at married love--these things were only words to her. And when she had tugged with all her might at

wn who made Clarence's money, what his own father had been like, what the forces were that had formed him, and had made him what he was. He did not p

or her storm. Through love she had come to know the brimming life of the world, the pathos, the comedy that is ready to spill itself over every humble window-sill, the joy that some woman's heart feels whenever the piping cry of the new-born sounds in a darkened r

but that the terrible machinery she had set in motion might bring its grinding wheels to bear upon the lives she guarded. She had flung her solemn promise aside, once; what defence could

ut twilight fell earlier now, and in the air at morning and evening was the intoxicating sharpness, the thin blue and clear steel color that mark the dying summer. Alice's three younger children were in school, and the family came to

ton the courts can give it to you for any cause they consider sufficient. There was a case: a man and his wife obtained a divorce and both remarried. Now they find they are both bigamists, because it was shown that the wife went West, with her husband's knowledge and consent, to establish her residence there for the explicit purpose of getting

ands do it

ured under these conditions are illegal. Besides this, the divorce laws as they exist in Washington, California, or Nevada are not recognized by other states, and so because a couple are separated upon

laws are so little und

ANY GROUNDS! It cannot be reconciled to law; it defies law. Right on the face of it, it is breaking a contract. Are any other contracts to be broken with public approval? We will see the return of the old, simple law, t

worth cutting. Life is a series of phases; we are none of us the same from year to y

woman!" Rachael sa

too; that whatever Warren has done, it was done more like--like the little boy who has never had his fling

all, isn't a child!

ere was always a sort of simplicity, a sort of bright innocence about Warren? He believed whatever anybody said until you laughed at him; he took e

es had fille

d," she said slowly. "I thought he was a

yourself; I'm not. Can't you just say to yourself that human beings are faulty--it may be your form of it to get dignified an

again until he admits it, and everyone admits it--that isn't what I want. But it's just that I'm dead, so far as that old feeling is concerned. It is as if a child saw

old plays. If Warren had done a 'hideously cruel' thing deliberately, that would be one thing; what he has done is quite another. The God who made us put sex into the world, Warren didn't;

d, badly shaken, and through tears.

lue air. Old Captain Semple, in his rickety one-seated buggy, drove up the beach, the water rising in the wheel-tracks. The children gathered about him; it was one of their excitements to see the Captain wash his carriage, and the old mare splash in the s

were almost TOO congenial, too sensitive to each other's moods. Warren knew that you idolized him, Rachael, and consequently, when

far horizon to rest upon Alice's face. The children had seen them now, and were running

se. Derry was always being rescued from deep water, always leaping blindly from high places and saved by the narrowest possible chance, always getting his soft mop of hair inextricably tangled in the steering-gear of Rachael's car, or his foot hopelessly twisted in the innocent-looking bars of his own bed, always eating mysterious berries, or tasting dangerous medicines, always ready to laugh deeply and deliciously at his own crimes. Jim assumed a protective a

holding forth as to the proper method of washing wagons! What man would not have been proud of this pair, enchanting in faded galatea now, soon to be introduced to linen knickerbockers, busy with their fi

o the Lord it wasn't true--anyway, Rachael had been perfectly horrible about seeing her old friends; couldn't she come at once to Vera, lots of the old crowd were there, and spend a month? Mrs. Barker Emery, meeting Rachael on one of the rare occasions when Rachael went into the city, asked pleasantly for the boys, and pleasantly did not ask for Warren. Belvedere Bay was gayer than ever this year, Mrs. Emory said;

tter from Florence, who said that "someone" had told her that the Gregorys might not be planning to keep their won

said to Alice, "is