She was silent after that. His gentle words of reassurance seemed to fall on closed ears. She stood staring up at the window of her room for several minutes, and then she said, in a tone that was quite incomprehensible to him: “You think I am silly--I know you do, but worrying over Jennie's death has--has really unstrung me. I am not myself. I don't know what I am doing or saying. I give myself up to terrible fancies. Good night, Paul.” He remained on the lawn after she had disappeared. He heard her slow step on the stair. His ecstatic spirit-dream was over. He sank on a rustic seat and bowed his head to his open hands. She was so dear to him and yet so absolutely unattainable! CHAPTER XIX |THE next afternoon, following a conference with the owner of the cotton-mill, which took place at Tye's shop, Paul returned home. As he was about to ascend the stairs to his room he met Mrs. Tilton in the hall. “Have you seen Jim?” she inquired; and when he had answered in the negative she added: “He was asking whar you was at. I thought I'd sort o' warn you to look out for him; he ain't in the best of tempers. Some'n's gone crooked somewhar or other. He actually cussed me just now an' slapped little Jack for the first time in over a year. The child was just comin' to git in his lap, an' he's been cryin' as if his heart was broke ever since.” “Where is Mr. Hoag?” Paul asked. “He's down at the tannery shippin' some leather.” There were still several minutes to spare before supper-time, and Paul decided to seek his employer at once, so he turned down to the tannery. As he approached the warehouse the rumble of the iron truck-wheels on the heavy floor reached him, and above the din he heard Hoag's gruff voice giving commands to two negro laborers. Stepping upon the platform, Paul saw his employer near the wide sliding door just within the dust-filled room, and he approached him. “Anything I can do?” he asked, politely. “Do! Does it look like thar's anything to do?” Hoag hurled the words at him, his eyes flashing beneath beetling brows, his lip curled and drawn tight across tobacco-stained teeth. Paul stared at him unflinchingly. “Shipments have always been made in the morning,” he said, calmly. He drew a note-book from his pocket and opened it. “I had this down for the first thing to-morrow.” “It ain't what _you_ have down, but what I want done, when an' how I like it. I couldn't find _you_, so I had to do it _myself_.” “We won't talk about that at all,” Paul retorted, drawn into anger he was trying hard to control. “I know I earn my salary, and I'll be treated like an intelligent human being while I am at work or I'll quit. Do you understand that? I'll quit!” “Damn your soul”--Hoag looked about on the floor as if for something with which to strike the speaker to earth--“do you mean to stand thar an' give me any of your jaw?”