"I thought you said you stopped the stream at its source. Now you
propose to let it run down to me--or up to me: how do you know it
will not run past me?"
"Now don't talk in that way," she said, "this is something you will
want to know," and she related what Harriet had chronicled.
VIII
When she had left the room, he put back into its place the volume
he was reading: its power over him was gone. All the voices of all
his books, speaking to him from lands and ages, grew simultaneously
hushed. He crossed the library to a front window opening upon the
narrow rocky street and sat with his elbow on the window-sill, the
large fingers of one large hand unconsciously searching his
brow--that habit of men of thoughtful years, the smoothing out of
the inner problems.
The home of Professor Hardage was not in one of the best parts of
the town. There was no wealth here, no society as it impressively
calls itself; there were merely well-to-do human beings of ordinary
intelligence and of kindly and unkindly natures. The houses,
constructed of frame or of brick, were crowded wall against wall
along the sidewalk; in the rear were little gardens of flowers and
of vegetables. The street itself was well shaded; and one forest
tree, the roots of which bulged up through the mossy bricks of the
pavement, hung its boughs before his windows. Throughout life he
had found so many companions in the world outside of mere people,
and this tree was one.
Pages:
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123