“And the worst of it is,” she went on, “I have lately lost that sense of being in touch with him. You remember how I told you about it. It came, I thought, through us both loving the farm, but indeed I did know, in some strange way, what he wanted done and when he was pleased. You will remember I told you. If I could feel still what was best to do, but it is like struggling all alone in the dark! Only one thing I know, I hold to. You cannot overcome hate with hate. You can only overcome hate with love. But the love is going out of the farm. It was so full of it—so full—I could hear it singing always in my heart. But now there is something awful here. I can sense it in the night, I can feel it in all sorts of ways. The peace has gone that was so beautiful, the radiance and the joy. And always now I have instead the sense of great struggle, and some evil thing that threatens.” “It is not fair on you or on the farm,” said North, very gently now. “Violet ought to leave.” “I don’t know. Sometimes I have thought so—and yet—I don’t know. I am working in the dark. I know so little really of these things—we all know so little.” “Her presence is injuring the farm, or so it seems. Indeed, it must be so. A human being full of hate and misery is no fit occupant for any home. Also we have no right——” Ruth looked at him, and again he felt ashamed. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “We have the sort of right that you acknowledge, I know, but I don’t think we should claim it.” “She came to me, or rather, I think, to the farm, to the nearest she could get to him. Or again, it might be the other force driving her. I don’t know. But I can’t send her away. I think of it sometimes, but I know I can’t.” “What is she like on the whole?” “Dull and moody sometimes, wandering about the place, hardly speaking at all. Once or twice she stayed in her room all day and refused all food. But at other times she will follow me about wherever I go, clinging to me like a child, eager to help. Sometimes she will commit some horrible little cruelty, and be ashamed of it afterwards and try to hide it. If she could speak of it at all, confide in anyone it would be better I think. But she does not seem able to.” North sat staring into the fire with haggard eyes, the deep lines of his face very visible as the flames leapt and fell. “It will send her out of her mind if it goes on,” he said at length. Ruth did not answer. Her silence voiced her own exceeding dread; it seemed to North terrible. If she should fail he knew that it would be one of the worst things which had ever happened to him. In that moment he knew how much she had come to stand for in his mind. He kept his eyes upon the fire and did not look at her. He dreaded to see that fear again in her eyes, dreaded to see her weak. It was as if the evil of the world was the only powerful thing after all. And he knew now that he had begun to hope, things deep down in his consciousness had begun to stir, to come to life.