“I don't know.” Slow tears wet her cheeks. “I can't say. I ought to; he's good and faithful, and with some of me that's enough. But there's another part; I can't explain it except to say it's a kind of excitement for the life Mr. Eckles told us about, all those lights and restaurants and theaters. Sometimes I think I'll die, I want it so much; then it comes over me how ungrateful I am to you and Aunt Ettie, and I hate myself for the way I treat Wilmer.” “Do you love him?” he insisted. “Perhaps not like you mean.” All that had been so long obscured in his mind and heart slowly cleared to understanding--Lucy Braley, Richmond's wife; Phebe; Hannah; and again Lucy, Lucy Vibard had this common hunger for life, for brightness; they were as helpless in its grasp as he had been to hold Hannah. Phebe's return, Martin Eckles--were only incidents in a great inner need. In itself it wasn't wicked; circumstance had made it seem wrong; Phebe's greenish hair, the mark of so much spoiled, Hannah's unhappy death--were the result of aspirations; they fretted and bruised, even killed themselves, like gay young animals, innocent animals, in a dark lonely enclosure. They were really finer than the satisfied women who faded to ugliness in the solitary homes of the Greenstream mountains; not better, for example, than Ettie--it might be that they weren't so good, not so high in heaven; but they were finer in the manner of blooded horses rebelling against the plow traces. They were more elegant, slimmer, with a greater fire. That too was the secret of their memorable power over him; he wanted a companion different from a kitchen drudge; when he returned home at evening, he wanted a wife cool and sweet in crisp white with a yellow ribbon about her waist, and store slippers. He loved Lucy's superiority--it was above ordinary things. “Like a star,” Calvin Stammark told himself. He, with everything else that had combated their desire, depriving them of the very necessities for his adoration, had been to blame. “Lucy,” he said, bending over her and speaking rapidly, “let's you and me go and learn all this life together. Let's run away from Greenstream and Wilmer Deakon and even Ettie, what we ought to hold by, and see every theater in the country. I've got enough money----” The radiance of the gesture by which she interrupted his speech filled him with pounding joy. “Oh, shall we!” she cried; and then hugged him wildly, her warm young arms about his neck. “Of course we will,” he reassured her; “and right away, to-morrow. You and me.” He felt her lips against his, and then more cautiously she took up the immediate planning of their purpose. It would be ridiculously easy; they would drive to Stanwick in the buggy. “The hotels and all,” she continued with shining eyes; “and nobody will think it's queer. I'll be your daughter, like always.”