There could have been no show of affection at his meeting with Jackson even if there had been any fact of it; that was not the law of their life. But Jeff had always been a turbulent, rebellious, younger brother, resentful of Jackson's control, too much his junior to have the associations of an equal companionship in the past, and yet too near him in age to have anything like a filial regard for him. They shook hands, and each asked the other how he was, and then they seemed to have done with each other. Jeff's mother kissed him in addition to the handshaking, but made him feel her preoccupation with Jackson; she asked him if he had hurried home on Jackson's account, and he promptly lied her out of this anxiety. He shook hands with Cynthia, too, but it was across the barrier which had not been lowered between them since they parted. He spoke to Jackson about her, the day after he came home, when Jackson said he was feeling unusually strong and well, and the two brothers had strolled out through the orchard together. Now and then he gave the sick man his arm, and when he wanted to sit down in a sunny place he spread the shawl he carried for him. "I suppose mother's told you about Cynthy and me, Jackson?" he began. Jackson answered, with lack-lustre eyes, "Yes." Presently he asked: "What's become of the other girl?" "Damn her! I don't know what's become of her, and I don't care!" Jeff exploded, furiously. "Then you don't care for her any more?" Jackson pursued, with the same languid calm. "I never cared for her." Jackson was silent, and the matter seemed to have faded out of his mind. But it was keenly alive in Jeff's mind, and he was in the strange necessity which men in the flush of life and health often feel of seeking counsel of those who stand in the presence of death, as if their words should have something of the mystical authority of the unknown wisdom they are about to penetrate. "What I want to know is, what I am going to do about Cynthy?" "I don't know," Jackson answered, vaguely, and he expressed by his indirection the sense he must sometimes have had of his impending fate--"I don't know what she's going to do, her or mother, either." "Yes," Jeff assented, "that's what I think of. And I'd do anything that I could--that you thought was right." Jackson apparently concentrated his mind upon the question by an effort. "Do you care as much for Cynthy as you used to?"