Crosson could not bear to look in her eyes. He could not bear the sound of Drury's voice. He could not even debate that problem. He was cravenly glad when somebody's hand seized him and a rough voice called him away to other toil. He slunk off. There were miseries enough wherever he went, but they were the miseries of strangers. He could not forget Irene and the riddle of duty that was hers. He avoided the spot where she was closeted with grief, and worked remote in the glimmer from bonfires lighted in the fields alongside. The fire in the wreck was out now, save that here and there little blazes appeared, only to be quenched at once. But smoldering timbers crackled like rifle-shots, and there were thunderous slidings of wreckage. Irene's mother and father had stood off at a distance for a long time, but at length they missed Irene and came over to question Crosson. He knew that Irene would not wish them present at such obsequies, and he told them she had gone home. After a time, curiosity nagged him into approaching her hiding-place. He listened, and there was no sound. He peered in and dimly descried Drury. He was not moving; he might have been asleep. Irene might have been asleep, too, for she lay huddled up in what space there was. Crosson knelt down and crawled in. She was unconscious. He touched Drury with a dreading hand, which drew quickly back as from a contact with ice. A kind of panic seized Crosson. He backed out quickly and dragged Irene away with him in awkward desperation. As her body came forth, his gun came too. He thought it had lain outside. He caught it and broke it at the breech, ejecting the two shells; one of them was empty. He threw it into the wreck and pocketed the other shell and tossed the gun under a stack of wreckage. He was trying to revive Irene when her father and mother came back anxiously to say that she was not at home. Her mother dropped down at her side. Crosson left Irene with her own people. He did not want to see her or hear her when she came back to this miserable world. He did not want her even to know what he knew. III Crosson had tried afterward to forget. It had been hard at first, but in time he had forgotten. He had gone to a theological school and learned to chide people for their complaints and to administer well-phrased anodynes. During his vacations he had avoided Irene. When he had been graduated he had been first pulpited in a far-off city.