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Page 49
"And now?" inquired the recluse.
"We're better friends than ever now. She got a divorce from me two
years ago. Just incompatibility. I didn't put in any defence. Well,
well, well, Hamp, this is certainly a funny dugout you've built here.
But you always were a hero of fiction. Seems like you'd have been the
very one to strike Edith's fancy. Maybe you did--but it's the bank -
roll that catches 'em, my boy--your caves and whiskers won't do it.
Honestly, Hamp, don't you think you've been a darned fool?"
The hermit smiled behind his tangled beard. He was and always had
been so superior to the crude and mercenary Binkley that even his
vulgarities could not anger him. Moreover, his studies and
meditations in his retreat had raised him far above the little
vanities of the world. His little mountain-side had been almost an
Olympus, over the edge of which he saw, smiling, the bolts hurled in
the valleys of man below. Had his ten years of renunciation, of
thought, of devotion to an ideal, of living scorn of a sordid world,
been in vain? Up from the world had come to him the youngest and
beautifulest--fairer than Edith--one and three-seventh times lovelier
than the seven-years-served Rachel. So the hermit smiled in his
beard.
When Binkley had relieved the hermitage from the blot of his presence
and the first faint star showed above the pines, the hermit got the
can of baking-powder from his cupboard. He still smiled behind his
beard.
There was a slight rustle in the doorway. There stood Edith Carr,
with all the added beauty and stateliness and noble bearing that ten
years had brought her.
She was never one to chatter. She looked at the hermit with her
large, thinking, dark eyes. The hermit stood still, surprised into a
pose as motionless as her own. Only his subconscious sense of the
fitness of things caused him to turn the baking-powder can slowly in
his hands until its red label was hidden against his bosom.
"I am stopping at the inn," said Edith, in low but clear tones. "I
heard of you there. I told myself that I must see you. I want to ask
your forgiveness. I sold my happiness for money. There were others
to be provided for--but that does not excuse me. I just wanted to see
you and ask your forgiveness. You have lived here ten years, they
tell me, cherishing my memory! I was blind, Hampton. I could not see
then that all the money in the world cannot weigh in the scales
against a faithful heart. If--but it is too late now, of course."
Her assertion was a question clothed as best it could be in a loving
woman's pride. But through the thin disguise the hermit saw easily
that his lady had come back to him--if he chose. He had won a golden
crown--if it pleased him to take it. The reward of his decade of
faithfulness was ready for his hand--if he desired to stretch it
forth.
For the space of one minute the old enchantment shone upon him with a
reflected radiance. And then by turns he felt the manly sensations of
indignation at having been discarded, and of repugnance at having
been--as it were--sought again. And last of all--how strange that it
should have come at last!--the pale-blue vision of the beautifulest of
the Trenholme sisters illuminated his mind's eye and left him without
a waver.
"It is too late," he said, in deep tones, pressing the baking-powder
can against his heart.
Once she turned after she had gone slowly twenty yards down the path.
The hermit had begun to twist the lid off his can, but he hid it again
under his sacking robe. He could see her great eyes shining sadly
through the twilight; but he stood inflexible in the doorway of his
shack and made no sign.
Just as the moon rose on Thursday evening the hermit was seized by the
world-madness.
Up from the inn, fainter than the horns of elf-land, came now and then
a few bars of music played by the casino band. The Hudson was
broadened by the night into an illimitable sea--those lights, dimly
seen on its opposite shore, were not beacons for prosaic trolley-
lines, but low-set stars millions of miles away. The waters in front
of the inn were gay with fireflies--or were they motor-boats, smelling
of gasoline and oil? Once the hermit had known these things and had
sported with Amaryllis in the shade of the red-and-white-striped
awnings. But for ten years he had turned a heedless ear to these far-
off echoes of a frivolous world. But to-night there was something
wrong.
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