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sins publicly if a preacher requested it—"I don't know—nobody else got up neither."

"But the preacher ast him."

"Well, as I say, I don't know, but I tell you one thing: Tug means to throw his influence in the right direction, he's told me that lots of times."

The girl was astonished. "How can he unless he does right?"

"Why, he jest wants to throw his influence, you know, no matter what he does hisse'f."

"But that don't make no sense!"

"Why, it does!"

"How does it/"

"Why, his influence, Nessie . . ."

Abner could simply stare at her because he had already reduced his proposition to its lowest terms. He was unaware that he was trying to expound a bit of masculine mysticism which the innately logical feminine mind would always reject. Abner easily conceived Tug as a bundle of influences, desires, acts, tendencies, in which his act might point in one direction, his influence another, and so on to infinity; but Nessie, womanlike, kept all these components of a man fused into one indissoluble personality; she could not possibly conceive of a man acting one way and wanting to throw his influence another. When Abner's explanation had dissolved on his tongue, Nessie said quietly, but with the deep satisfaction that the woman who is in love with a man gets out of his downfalls when pitted against her:

"You see—you haven't got nothin' to say."

Her little self-satisfied tone, her unjust reflection on Tug, and the fact that he really had nothing to say, because the emotion he felt was too delicate for words—this wounded Abner. It amazed him that she did not feel it herself, and disappointed him.

"Well," said Abner flatly, "Tug's one of the best-hearted fellows in the world no matter what he does on the outside."

This, of course, was a simple restatement of his paradox.