She knew that he had said all this to give her time, and she struggled with those crowding emotions, trying and failing, and trying again to beat them down. He waited, with his back towards her, his face to the painted sea. He was a resourceful man, quick to grasp a difficulty and its solution, for others as well as himself, but now he halted, baffled, like a man come to a blind wall. His mind ran through that first slow year at Freeport, and it flashed over him what an interminable blank it would have been without her. Confined as they were to the narrow limits of the mills, it had been as close as life on shipboard. They had taken their meals together; they had met, passed and repassed countless times daily on the short walks. He had been glad to show a helpful interest in little Silas. He had fallen easily into the way of spending his evenings, when he could, with her; she loved his violin. He saw now how those hours had dulled the poignancy of putting Alice out of his life. He remembered how he had commenced to watch in Louise for a repetition of those many little airs he liked; the lifting of the chin, the high pose of the head, the ready change of color; all modified, it was true, softened and blended with much that was not her sister’s, but there, palpable, near, breathing, flesh and blood. And most of all he understood what she had done for him when that business depression laid a fatal hand on the mills. He had meant to do great things and he was one to take defeat hard; but she, this sweet, proud woman, with the courage in her voice and the heart-break in her eyes, had taught him by example how to fight a losing battle to the end, and—like a man. The silence was broken by the neigh of a horse. It was unusual on that promontory; saddle-animals never took the foot-path over the bluff to the mills, and afterwards Forrest remembered the sound. Then, though he turned and looked in the direction of the neigh, he gave it small attention. His glance fell to her; and that attitude, the hidden face, the slender shaking figure, brought back an onrush of the tumult he had felt the night she so nearly lost her child; bitter resentment against Philip, immeasurable pity, tenderness for her, and a desire to take, and protect and comfort her. "See here," he said, and his deep voice vibrated a a little, holding each word like a caress, "See here, don’t make so much of it; he isn’t worth it. No man on earth is."