"It's not like that,"
they said. "It's as dull and uninteresting as this
here. Nothing comes of it."
With the traveling men when she walked about with them,
and later with Tom Willard, it was quite different.
Always they seemed to understand and sympathize with
her. On the side streets of the village, in the
darkness under the trees, they took hold of her hand
and she thought that something unexpressed in herself
came forth and became a part of an unexpressed
something in them.
And then there was the second expression of her
restlessness. When that came she felt for a time
released and happy. She did not blame the men who
walked with her and later she did not blame Tom
Willard. It was always the same, beginning with kisses
and ending, after strange wild emotions, with peace and
then sobbing repentance. When she sobbed she put her
hand upon the face of the man and had always the same
thought. Even though he were large and bearded she
thought he had become suddenly a little boy. She
wondered why he did not sob also.
In her room, tucked away in a corner of the old Willard
House, Elizabeth Willard lighted a lamp and put it on a
dressing table that stood by the door. A thought had
come into her mind and she went to a closet and brought
out a small square box and set it on the table.
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