“Don’t let any shadow rise between us,” he begged. “Of course not; why should it?” He put his arms round her, and to her surprise kissed her. “Good-bye—take care of yourself and come back quickly. I won’t bother you about the lecture any more,” he promised. Then he ran down the hill, and Medora watched him go. She was regretting the kiss. When she had hungered for kisses, they did not come. Such a thing now was insipid—fruit over-ripe, doubtful as a delicacy past its season. She believed that she had frightened him into this display of emotion. His promise not to trouble her again about the lecture was also a sign of weakness. She thawed, and felt almost sorry for him. Jordan was growing fainter, it seemed to her. His outlines began to blur even after a few days’ absence from him. An overpowering desire to see Ned again oppressed her. CHAPTER XXVI THE STROKE Medora’s native instinct, to fight for her own hand at the expense of the community, now held some strife with her appreciation of what Kellock had done and suffered on her account. At first a sense of justice strove to remind her of their relations and of Jordan’s views with respect to her and her future. She was, in fact, as he had declared, his paramount thought and first object in life. And this he felt without any diminution of his personal ambitions. But he had supposed, and she had given him every reason to suppose, that his ambitions and hers were one; that she desired nothing better than to help him in his propagandist work. During the earliest days of their association in London, this had been her purpose and assurance; but it was so no longer. The artificial existence with Kellock had knocked all the poetry out of their relation, and his aspirations now found her averse. Because Kellock could not understand what made life worth living to her, Medora’s interest and loyalty alike were withered. Yet now she put up a struggle for him and it lasted longer than might have been expected. Indeed, it endured for twenty-four hours, until the morning following upon a sleepless night. Then her chivalry and general vague sense of her obligations went down before what she believed, perhaps rightly, was her common sense. She began to see, with a dazzle of conviction, that Kellock was not at all the husband for her; but her woman’s wit put it differently: she assured her soul that she was not the wife for Kellock. This step once taken, those that followed were exceedingly swift, and they appeared first in a conversation, not with the man she desired to meet, but with another. For the present she concealed her new impressions from her family, but on the following Sunday, Mr. Knox came to tea, and was pleasant and agreeable, according to his custom. Tom and Mary Dolbear, gratified to observe the large philosophy with which he had taken his defeat, welcomed him and forgot the hard things they had said and thought about him.