Page:Teeftallow-1926.djvu/414

the village for such a long time, and now for there to be no Joneses at all . . . and then the thought of never seeing Adelaide again. It screwed Abner's courage to the point of sending the girl a note asking to call. She answered kindly enough, and when he went to the Jones manor he found all the furniture packed for shipment, the carpets baled, even the electric fixtures in process of being removed.

Adelaide was in black. She and her mother were going away, she said. She would find her mother a home, then she herself meant to go to India. When Abner asked an amazed question, she explained with that complete frankness and simplicity which had attracted him from the very first time he saw her. She said while she was in the seminary at Nashville she had fallen in love with a man who was going to India, a theological student. Her position at that time, her feeling of abhorrence for her lover's work as a missionary, led to their separation, but he had made her promise if God should ever make her feel the truth she would come to him.

"And, Abner," she concluded, "if this isn't the work of God, if—if this terrible sorrow isn't—isn't the work of God—" She broke off with tears in her eyes, compressing her lips to steady them.

"Do—do you still love him?" asked Abner, aghast.

"I—don't know . . . I did love him . . . Life twists you about so . . . Anyway, I couldn't endure just a village existence now, Abner, with you . . . or Buckingham Sharp . . . or any one at all. I must have something great somewhere." And her shadowed eyes took on a momentary burning that reminded Abner of Railroad Jones.

This last resignation of her was the last and the sharpest pang Adelaide ever gave the hillman. When he lost her, even Abner realized that he was losing a high brave soul; self-centred, no doubt, journeying toward strange and perhaps bitter goals, but courageous and somehow generous.

Before he went away Adelaide suggested that he marry