"How?" eagerly.
"I met him in the pine woods of the South. I was down there to recover
from a cataclysm which had changed--my life. This man had a little
shack next to mine. Neither of us had much money. We lived literally
in the open. We cooked over fires in front of our doors. We hunted
and fished. Now and then we went to town for our supplies, but most of
our things we got from the schooner-men who drove down from the hills.
My neighbor was married. He had a wife and three children. But he had
come alone. And he told me grimly that he should never go back until
he went back a man."
"Did he go back?"
"Yes. He conquered. He looked upon his weakness not merely as a moral
disease, but as a physical one. And it was to be cured like any other
disease by removing the cause. The first step was to get away from old
associations. He couldn't resist temptation, so he had come where he
was not tempted. His occupation in the city had been mental, here it
was largely physical. He chopped wood, he tramped the forest, he
whipped the streams. And gradually he built up a self which was
capable of resistance. When he went back he was a different man, made
over by his different life. And he has cast out his--devil."
The boy was visibly impressed.
"His way might not be your way," Roger concluded, "but the fact that he
fought a winning battle should give you hope."
The next day they went back. Mary met them as if nothing had happened.
The basket of fish which they had brought to be cooked by Susan Jenks
furnished an unembarrassing topic of conversation. Then Barry went to
his room, and Mary was alone with Roger.
She had had a letter from him, and a message by telephone; thus her
anxiety had been stilled. And she was very grateful--so grateful that
her voice trembled as she held out her hands to him.
"How shall I ever thank you?" she said.
He took her hands in his, and stood looking down at her.
He did not speak at once, yet in those fleeting moments Mary had a
strange sense of a question asked and answered. It was as if he were
calling upon her for something she was not ready to give--as if he were
drawing from her some subconscious admission, swaying her by a force
that was compelling, to reveal herself to him.