After all, she couldn't expect him to continue that development. A different man might; and Nettie wasn't sure of her refusal to listen...to the end. But she was familiar with Gerrit's unbending conception of the necessity of truth alone. If he married a woman, yellow, black, anything, he would perform, the obligation to the entire boundary of his promise. Good and bad seemed equally united against her. Little flashes of resentment struck through her leaden, conviction that all this was useless. "I must be of some use to you." But, Nettie realized, there was only one way in which he could help her; only one thing she wanted--could take--from him. She was terrified at the completeness with which love had possessed her, making every other fact and consideration of little interest or importance. Suddenly it seemed as if she were being swept by an overwhelming current farther and farther out from safety into a bottomless immensity that would claim her life. "Yet," he cried, "if I lift a hand, here, in Salem, if I as much as cross the street to speak to you--the clapping tongues! I can do you nothing but harm. Though Rhoda might--" "I don't want your Rhoda!" she interrupted passionately. "I've managed without them all up to now." He raised his arms in a hopeless gesture. "Nothing's to be done," she concluded. "I saw that all along; that is, this last time." "It's late," he muttered absently; "you have had a day." He turned mechanically and moved away from the indefinite black rim of the harbor. The lamp in the sitting room had been extinguished, the house was dark. A brief embarrassment seized her as he stood trying vainly to find something confident, even adequate, to say for farewell. And as the stir of his footfalls died away up Hardy Street the memory of his last futile words mocked her laboring heart. She turned and faced Edward Dunsack, advancing from an obscurity deeper than the rest. He murmured approvingly, she caught words of commendation and unspeakable reassurance. She hurried away blindly, sick to the inmost depths of her being. The morning, when she had tied her gay bonnet ribbons and started out with the scarlet merino shawl on her arm, seemed to belong to a long, long time ago, to a girl.... The popping of a final string of firecrackers died outside. VIII